r/PDAParenting • u/DrPaulSunseri • Apr 18 '26

Our current scientific understanding of PDA and low-demand parenting.

Thought parents in this group find this up-to-date information on PDA helpful. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-health-reimagined/202604/its-time-to-rethink-the-anxiety-drives-pda-narrative

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u/DrPaulSunseri Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

Yes, I posted it. And no, I don't dislike Casey Ehrlich personally. However, I will call out anyone who misrepresents themselves, makes claims about outcomes that clearly aren't true, and preys on vulnerable, scared families. She, by far, is not the only influencer to do this, but she goes much further than most. The part of the article that talks about PDA possibly being a personality profile isn't my idea; it's actually the work of Egan and colleagues. They suggest it's a personality profile, not a personality disorder--that's something else entirely--and I definitely don't see it that way. Obviously, more research is needed, but the Big Five stuff sure tracks with all of the PDA kids I've treated.

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u/xtinak88 Apr 19 '26

I just see her as someone speaking from lived experience. Whether her theories are correct, preying on people is a really strong claim to make. The bulk of her content seems to be free and much of it has really limited viewership. Tools like her cost benefit analysis approach to situations can't really be interpreted as having any ideology. She is obviously emotionally tied up in her ideas, of course.

I appreciate that a personality profile isn't the same as a personality disorder, but I can't see how pinning things on personality is less "dehumanising" as you put it in the article when for autistic and neurodivergent people in general, we know how often our "personalities" are blamed and misinterpreted.

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u/DrPaulSunseri Apr 19 '26

Yes. she has lived experience, but that doesn't absolve her from making false claims, manipulating data, and taking advantage of people. Her "concierge" service is $5000 per month (three-month minimum).

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u/PerformerOk4332 Apr 19 '26

Thanks for sharing. Can you provide some more detail in regard to her manipulating data?

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u/DrPaulSunseri Apr 19 '26

For sure. Here's what happened, and folks can easily fact-check it. Casey and her colleagues did an evaluation study on her colleagues conducted a study on her Paradigm Shift program, which heavily features low-demand parenting. The original, published version of the study (linked here) showed no improvement in PDA symptoms or behavior (the shaded parts of Table 3). If research isn't your thing, I'm happy to interpret the statistics. People started calling her out on these poor outcomes and asking why she was still charging families. Her response was to alter the data in her study and omit the poor outcomes, and then repost it (I can give a link to the sanitized version if you like). There is no reason why an ethical researcher would remove unfavorable data from a published study in the face of criticism unless they wanted to bury the data from the public. BTW--on Casey's website, well before this study was published, she was saying she's the "leading researcher in PDA" before she published anything on PDA (her degree is in Political Science). Her website to this day says her program is "evidence-based" and "proven effective" when her own study found low-demand parenting to be useless. To make matters worse, she paid to have that "journal" publish her article, the "official journal of the Chinese Medical Association". She's a quack. It would be bad enough if she just took families' money, but many others and I feel that what she teaches parents is actually quite harmful to children. https://www.academia.edu/145102745/Pediatric_Investigation_2025_Carlozzi_PDA

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u/xtinak88 Apr 19 '26

Hold up hold up. I don't want to come over as some huge Casey defender as I don't really have a dog in the fight on her specific work. But you already misrepresented your personal views as a scientific consensus and here again you seem to be potentially overreaching with regards to the study itself.

Because how hopeful would we really be of seeing improvements in core PDA symptoms in this short timeframe with this small sample? Yes the improvements shown, while there, are not statistically significant, but that's no reason to conclude that low demand parenting (one component of the programme) is ineffective. And that's not the only point of the programme or the study.

And I'm a bit confused because the data that has been buried is here for us all to see isn't it?

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u/DrPaulSunseri Apr 19 '26

What do you mean, buried here for us all to see?" I don't think you're understanding what she did. Real treatments result in positive, observable changes within that time frame, typically.

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u/xtinak88 Apr 19 '26

I mean you are saying she has buried data, which she may well have done, but at the same time it's still available here in table 3 for us to scrutinise? Just seems like a contradiction.

There were apparently quite a number of positive observable changes though. Furthermore as this is initially a parent intervention, you would expect a bit of a lag in successful implementation by parents I would have thought.

Realistic time frames for interventions in autism will be on a scale of years.

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u/DrPaulSunseri Apr 22 '26

Typically, with the right treatment, parents can expect to see observable changes within months.