Clinician training on catatonia in autism.
ECHO Autism: Catatonia in Autism. A five-session series training clinicians, May through July 2026.
Far too many families in our community have reached out exasperated, unable to find a doctor who understands catatonia. Catatonia in autism gets missed for months, sometimes years. Families cannot get care from clinicians who have never been trained to recognize it.
So NCSA invested in the workforce. With the Autism Science Foundation, we co-funded a five-session Project ECHO on Catatonia in Autism, hosted by Nationwide Children's Hospital: specialist training for the clinicians families actually see, so that a family walking into a clinic or an emergency department has a better chance of meeting someone who knows what they are looking at.
How Project ECHO works
Project ECHO moves knowledge, not people. A hub of specialists trains clinicians case by case over Zoom, and participating clinicians earn continuing education credit as they learn. The model is validated professional training: the expertise concentrated at a handful of academic centers reaches the community clinicians families actually see.
The series
- Identification and clinical features: features, diagnostic reasoning, assessment
- First-line medication: gold-standard treatment, monitoring, second-line options
- ECT, Part 1: acute and maintenance paradigms, individualization
- ECT, Part 2: history, autism-specific applications, access barriers
- Supporting patients and families: systemic barriers, advocacy, family wellbeing
Featured presenters
Lee Wachtel, MD, Kennedy Krieger Institute · Josh Smith, MD, Vanderbilt University · Nadine Schwartz, MD, Nationwide Children's Hospital · Ann Neumeyer, MD, Mass General Research Institute · Martine Lamy, MD, PhD, Cincinnati Children's Hospital
Who was trained
Fifty-two clinicians from 36 learning sites in 15 states took part across the five sessions, 179 attendances in all. Participants included physicians, psychiatrists, and a neurologist; nurse practitioners, nurses, and a physician assistant; and psychologists, social workers, and mental health counselors.
Source: iECHO program analytics, August 2026.
Session recordings were not made available. This was professional training for clinicians, not a public program; its product is a better-prepared workforce. For information about future ECHO cohorts, contact info@ncsautism.org.
Hosted by Nationwide Children's Hospital Project ECHO. Co-funded by the National Council on Severe Autism and the Autism Science Foundation.
When clinicians recognize catatonia, lives can be saved. Your support makes this work possible.