There are many different therapies, but the effect they have varies dramatically from person to person. Remediation of the debilitating aspects of autism is also hindered by widespread disagreement over its nature and causes, and by a lack of recognized and effective therapies.

The behavioral and cognitive functioning of individuals with autism might improve with the help of psychosocial and pharmacological interventions. Among psychosocial treatments, intensive, sustained special education programs and behavior therapy early in life might increase the ability of children with autism to acquire language and the ability to learn. In adults with autism, some studies have found beneficial effects of the antidepressant medications clomipramine and fluoxetine and the antipsychotic medication haloperidol. In many cases quite a few medications will have to be tried until a successful drug is found, and the drug may lose effectiveness later in life, complicating matters further.

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A major breakthrough (in some respects) in the remediation of autistic behaviors came through work spearheaded by Ole Ivar Lovaas, who believed that success could be obtained by behavioral approaches.

Lovaas' approaches—often referred to as Discrete Trial, Intensive Behavior Intervention, and Applied Behavior Analysis—are some of the best known and most widely used in the field and focus on the development of attention, imitation, receptive or expressive language, and pre-academic and self-help skills. Using a one-to-one therapist-child ratio and the "antecedent-behavior-consequence" (ABC) model, interventions based on this work involve trials or tasks. Each consists of (a) an antecedent, which is a directive or request for the child to perform an action; (b) a behavior, or response from the child, which may be categorized as successful performance, noncompliance, or no response; and (c) a consequence, defined as the reaction from the therapist, which ranges from strong positive reinforcement to a strong negative response, "No!"(Autism Society of America, 2001)"

Lovaas' Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) methods were the first scientifically validated therapy for autism. Early intervention, generally before school-age, seems to be critical to achieving optimal outcomes.

ABA techniques based on B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior have succeeded in helping nonverbal children start to talk, typically going from zero words to several dozen. By allowing children to express their needs, even rudimentary speech can alleviate frustration and tantrums.

The scientific validity of Lovaas's methods is questioned by many professionals as well as parents and autistic's themselves. Lovaas's initial studies looked promising but have not been reproduced by others with the same rate of success. There have not been any double-blind studies that validate ABA, so it is unclear if any improvements seen in children are simply due to their normal course of development.

Many also feel that there are serious ethical problems, and point out that early ABA was based around the use of aversives which are confusing and painful.

ABA may not be appropriate for every autistic or developmentally delayed child. ABA has come into widespread use only in the last decade and the demand is outstripping the supply of committed and experienced service providers. As a result, parents of children need to be extra vigilant in choosing appropriate treatments for their children and especially in choosing providers, who may be inexperienced, use questionable methods or even deceive parents that they are competent to run an ABA or any other program. Such problems have led to horror stories from some parents.

Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) is a research-based treatment program developed by Dr. Steven E. Gutstein. Whereas ABA aims to teach social skills directly, RDI focuses on building the "dynamic intelligence" that underlies the acquisition of those social skills in neurotypical children. It also focuses on the building blocks of motivation by developing episodic memory (seen as impaired in autism) and filling it with the child's own personal stories of competence and mastery. RDI emphasizes declarative (as opposed to imperative) communication, and aims for an appropriate balance of verbal and nonverbal communication.

Dr. Gutstein claims that 70% of his patients improved their ADOS score within 18 months, which is unprecedented (it was previously thought that improvement on the ADOS was impossible), and that a similar proportion are able to enter school without a shadow teacher or other personal assistant.

The Son-Rise program was developed by Samahria & Barry Neil Kaufman, who founded the Option Institute to promulgate their more general philosophy upon which the Son-Rise program is partially based, and to provide training in this treatment approach. It is a home-based program with emphasis on eye contact, accepting the child without judgment, and engaging the child in a noncoercive way. The Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT) maintains a Description of the Son-Rise Program.

Criticism about the Son-Rise program revolves around the fact that there are no scientific studies that validate its claims. Critics have also pointed out that it may provide "false hope" to desperate parents.

Many studies have shown that computers help calm autistic children and help them communicate,and that often autistic children take to computers more quickly than non-autistic people. However, evidence suggesting that computers help autistic children communicate without computers is less promising, and autistic children are not immune to the effects of overuse of computers. One can deduce from this that autistic children often communicate better through e-mail than normal speech, but in rare cases the reverse can be true also.

Some groups have proposed more precise scientific reasons for why this happens. One such group, the nonprofit Autism and Computing, claims that autism is monotropism and they argue that computers provide an easy way of joining attention tunnels (a.k.a. undivided attention) with minimal discomfort, circumventing some of the most disabling features of autistic spectrum disorders

Dr. Karl Ludwig Reichelt claims to have found peptides from casein and gluten that worsen the symptoms of autistic children. These peptides are casomorphines and gluten exorphins, which influence the brain. According to Dr. Reichelt, significant improvement has been seen in the symptoms of some of his patients with autism who had been put on a diet that omits these peptides. The diet is called the gluten-free, casein-free diet. Some physicians see diet as a central part of the treatment, but in addition to many other treatments at the same time