About the Center
The Center for
Psychological, Medical and Social Support of Children and Teenagers (CPMSSC)
at the Moscow Education Department is one of the first centers set up in
Moscow and Russia to provide comprehensive medical, psychological and
pedagogical support to children and teenagers. Opened in 1994, pursuant
to the Moscow Government decision, the center is a public educational
institution.
Experienced and highly qualified specialists practice
in the Center - defectologists, logopedists, neuro-psychologists,
clinical and social psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts,
neurologists, pediatricians, masseurs, functional diagnosticians and
teachers. Among 170 employees of the Center, there are three MDs and
three medical candidates, one Ph.D and five candidates in the psychology,
and eight post-graduate students. Since the Center's establishment, its
employees have defended two doctor and master theses and published five
monographs, two teacher handbooks, seven textbooks and children's
note-books. The Center offers consultations, screening and treatment to
3-18 y.o. children and teenagers residing in Moscow and the Moscow
Region. CPMSSC is housed in two buildings.
The first one is located at: 7 Kashenkin Lug, Moscow (suppport
and treatment of children with infantile autism).
The second one is located at: 19 Architect Vlassov Str.,
Bldg 2, Moscow (support and treatment of children with learning,
behavioral, and communication problems, impellent disinhibition, left -
handedness, mental and speech retardation, speech problems, educational
(reading, calculation, writing) disorders, tics, urinary incontinence,
phobias, sleep disorder, problems in parent/children relations, various
somatic diseases, etc.
The Center provides the following support and treatment:
1. Speech Disorder Correction and Prevention
Logopedists and psychologists help children with general speech
underdevelopment, stuttering, reading and writing disorders, treat
specific speech disturbances in children with infantile autism and seek
to prepare children for correct speech perception and speaking, to help
them achieve free speech contact and overcome the fear of speaking, to
improve writing and reading skills, to develop sound/letter analysis and
acoustic/visual attention so that they could get rid of specific writing
mistakes.
2. Neuro-Psychological Correction
Neuro-psychologists provide special training to children with spatial
disorders, learning problems, mental retardation and left-handedness.
This training gears toward shaping all types of spatial and
quasi-spatial perceptions, developing impellent skills and the ability
to understand and use logical and grammatical constructions, improving
sensor-motor actualization, creating the idea of the body image,
improving visual/motor coordination, spatial functions, handling memory
and attention disorders, correcting programming and control functions.
The work is based on original authors' programs developed in the Center.
3. Psychotherapy
Psychoanalysts of the Center carry out individually-tailored and group
trainings with children and their parents as well as family
psychotherapeutic sessions. Psychotherapy is aimed at solving inner
conflicts and communicative and behavioral problems, desensitizing fears,
remodeling children/parents and inter-family relations. Treatment
focuses on shaping empathic attitudes and the ability to address
problems in a constructive way, on improving adaptability and
performance of social functions, on formation of communication skills
and development of the ability to work together with others, to predict
how others may behave as well as on teaching how to plan and control
one's behavior. Treatment of children with infantile autism and their
parents is quite a peculiar thing for psychoanalysts and includes
methods of game psychotherapy with psychodrama components, gestalt
method, art treatment, behavioral treatment, dance and movement
treatment, catathymic and imaginative treatment, psychotherapy, rational
psychotherapy, etc.
4. Psychological Consultations for Teenagers
Psychologists provide consultations to teenagers experiencing behavioral
and learning problems. The Center offers trainings designed to ensure
better social adaptation and personal evolution of teenagers and to
improve communication skills as well as to prevent behavioral health
risks.
5. Psychological Support to Children with Chronic Disorders
Healthcare providers and psychologists of the Center are involved in
development of comprehensive rehabilitation programs for children with
chronic psycho-somatic diseases (spasmodic asthma, ulcers, etc.) using
non-drug treatment (interval hypoxic exercises) in combination with
psychological treatment. Physicians of the department conduct
comprehensive psychological screening of a child and determine the
functioning status of vital systems of his/her body as well as the
degree of his/her physiological adaptation. Computer
cardio-intervalography (CIG), being integral measure of vegetative
homeostasis, adaptability of the body and the state of the vegetative
nervous system, is applied to early screen vegetative disorders. As a
treatment method based on activation of the body's own protective
potential and physiological reserves, interval hypoxic exercises (IHE)
constitute a drug-free way of enhancing host resistance to numerous
environmental pathogens as well as of improving its compensatory
capacities. Psychological treatment gears toward anxiety reduction in
children with chronic somatic diseases, towards shaping adequate
perception of his/her disease, creating conditions for emotional
self-expression of a child, developing children's communications skills,
teaching mothers how to adequately treat their children and to dwell on
their own psychological disorders as well as how to improve children/parents
relations.
6. School for Children with Infantile Autism
The primary school for children with infantile autism is operating at
the Center. Children study in small classrooms with modern equipment.
Training is arranged both under the program for children with mental
retardation and under the one for auxiliary school (for children with
lower intelligence, including moronity). Children with severe
intellectual deficiency (including imbecility) are individually trained
by a defectologist teacher. Training at school is combined with
treatment.
7. Screening and Treatment of Children with Infantile Autism
Experienced physicians who screen a child's state of health provide the
initial consultation. Individually-tailored plans that envisage
treatment, correction, and training programs for children to be
implemented both in the Center and at home are developed in conjunction
with other specialists - psychologists, defectologists, psychoanalysts,
etc. Correction takes place on out-patients basis when children attend
either group or individually-tailored classes or both as well as when
they study at school; it includes training with defectologists,
psychologists, logopedists, psychoanalysts, optional education teachers
(classes of music, drawing, house-keeping, amusing mathematics, etc.)
and is aimed at developing communication skills, correcting speech
disturbances, teaching to read and write, desensitizing fears, etc.
Within a rehabilitation program, the Center offers courses of exercise
therapy, health-improving swimming, and massage - all of which target to
improve musculoskeletal system, to develop coordination and motility.
The Center pays much attention to parent support: there is a parents'
seminar conducted on a regular basis, family psychotherapy consultations,
parents/children psychotherapeutic groups.
8. The Center has pre-school preparatory groups for children which are
held by qualified teachers, psychologists, and logopedists. Cutting-edge
educational equipment and games are used there. The program encompasses
speech development and correction; training hand for writing;
development of spatial perceptions, motility, mathematical notions,
ideas about the world that surrounds us, communication and school skills.
9. A subdivision of the Center is the primary correction and development
school that caters for children with severe learning and behavioral
problems, mental retardation, lack of school skills, speech problems,
motional disinhibition, etc. Training is based on the program for
correction and development classes (1-4) and envisages group and
individually-tailored training, with a child's subsequent integration
into the group. Training and education by teachers and tutors is aimed
at correction and takes into account individual peculiarities and
problems in development of pupils.
Methodic Support to Secondary Schools
The Center specializes in arranging for such
educational environment at schools that enhances pupils' health. The
Center's specialists hold trainings with secondary school teachers which
are devoted to development of health-conscious school programs, namely:
- How to transform a traditional school in a health-conscious one
- Comprehensive efficiency appraisal of a health-conscious school
- Teaching 1-11 grade pupils in healthy lifestyle
- Development and implementation of the School Smoking Prevention
program
- Development and implementation of the School Violence Prevention
program.
The Center has published a scientific and practical journal The School
of Health for eight years and is going to publish the first issue of
Autism and Development Disorders journal.
Our Address:
7 Kashenkin Lug (Vladykino or VDNKh metro station).
Registration Office phone: 219 74 87.
19 Architect Vlassov Str., Bldg 2 (Novyie Cheremushki metro station).
Registration Office phone: 128 98 83.
*The information was provided by the Center for Psychological, Medical,
and Social Support of Children and Teenagers (CPMSSC) at the at the
Moscow Education Department
