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Australia’s first national guideline for supporting the learning, participation and wellbeing of autistic children and their families.
Social media allows users to connect with others’ experiences and points of view, with TikTok being the fastest-growing platform worldwide. Highly viewed videos related to neurodiversity on TikTok have an increasing role in understanding and acceptance of neurodivergent individuals.
Young children diagnosed with autism experience high rates of co-occurring anxiety, with uncertainty-related concerns commonly reported. This randomized controlled trial investigated an 8-week parent-mediated group anxiety intervention, “Coping with Uncertainty in Everyday Situations” (CUES-Junior©).
Emerging evidence suggests that observers tend to form less favorable first impressions toward autistic people than toward non-autistic people. These negative impressions may be associated with immediate behavioral responses, as well as long-lasting attitudes toward those being observed that may negatively impact their psychosocial wellbeing.
Autistic adolescents are vulnerable to sleep difficulties, with up to 80 % experiencing sleep problems, most commonly insomnia. Little is known about how autistic adolescents are involved in their own sleep treatment, and their depth of knowledge about their sleep difficulties. The aims of this study were to investigate autistic adolescent and parent perspectives of experiencing and managing insomnia, and what factors influence the development of these perspectives on insomnia and treatment.
Individuals exhibiting pronounced autistic traits (e.g., social differences and specialised interests) may struggle with cognitive empathy (i.e., the ability to infer others' emotions), although the relationship with affective empathy (i.e., the ability to share others' emotions) is less clear in that higher levels of autistic traits may be linked with increased affective empathy for negative emotions but reduced affective empathy for positive emotions. The current study investigates this empathy profile and whether alexithymia and emotion dysregulation help to explain it.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are commonly prescribed to manage anxiety in adults with an autism diagnosis. However, their effectiveness and adverse effect profile in the autistic population are not well known. This trial aims to determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the SSRI sertraline in reducing symptoms of anxiety and improving quality of life in adults with a diagnosis of autism compared with placebo and to quantify any adverse effects.
The importance of supporting parent-child interactions has been noted in the context of prodromal autism, but little consideration has been given to the possible contributing role of parental characteristics, such as psychological distress. This cross-sectional study tested models in which parent-child interaction variables mediated relations between parent characteristics and child autistic behaviour in a sample of families whose infant demonstrated early signs of autism.
The broadening of the clinical definition of autism over time-the so-called, autism spectrum-has run in parallel with the growth of a neurodiversity movement that has reframed the concept of autism entirely. Without a coherent and evidence-based framework through which both of these advances can be situated, the field is at risk of losing definition altogether.
Siblings of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) have greater incidence of neuropsychiatric diagnoses and neurocognitive difficulties compared to siblings of persons without NDCs. Despite suicidality being labelled a global health crisis (WHO, 2014) and NDC siblings experiencing risk factors implicated in suicidality, no previous studies examined suicidality amongst adolescent and young adult siblings of persons with NDCs. Our study aimed to bridge this gap.