From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also with a show at KCRW.com.

The lives of families with autistic children are exhausting, harrowing,

and finally, maybe even hopeful.

The family of Rupert Isaacson

is featured in the new documentary, The Horseboy.

Isaacson, a journalist, also wrote a book of the same name.

Rupert, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

You and your wife took your young son to Mongolia

to basically see what could be done. I wonder where the idea of making a film

of this entire journey that you take came from. Obviously, I'm not a filmmaker. I'm a guy that

made a film. There's a difference. I'm a writer and a journalist. When we knew we were going to

take this journey, the idea was, I think this

will help my son, then came, well, I'm a writer, so I'll probably write about it because I write

about most things that I do. But I thought that if I did chronicle it, and there was change,

and you're asking people to sort of take your word for it, then there's a limit to how much

use that

information is to other parents. In the autism world, you get most of your good information

from other parents. They're trying all the therapies so they can tell you what worked in their

case, what didn't work in their case, and so on. So I didn't think, well, that, you know,

everyone's going to get on a plane and go to Mongolia, but what I thought was if there is change, the various components of this experience are out there for consumption, really, that, you know, whether it's nature, whether it's equine therapy, whether it's, you know, the time together as a family, whether it's the shamanism, you know, in this case,

...