Autism and Mental Health Care

[In progress]

project summary

Autistic people experience high rates of mental health problems, but mental health care is rarely tailored to their needs and often reported to be unsuitable. To inform policy in this area, we are conducting a pair of reviews of literature on strategies to improve access, experiences of care and mental health outcomes for autistic people have been developed. Within the scope of our reviews are bespoke strategies for autistic people with mental health problems, adaptations of standard interventions and services, and strategies to improve detection of autism in mental health services.The questions we are investigating are:

1. What strategies have been developed to improve mental health treatment and services for autistic people, and what is the acceptability and feasibility of these strategies?
2. How effective are strategies that have been developed to improve mental health care for autistic people?

A working group including MHPRU researchers, researchers with relevant lived experience, policy makers and experts in this field have worked together on this review. The protocol for our review is available here.

We are publishing findings in two papers, one focusing on adults and one on children and young people, as well as presenting our findings to policy makers. The paper on adults is now available as a pre-print.