Abstract
Although depression and anxiety are the most common comorbidities in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), descriptive data for their prevalence among autistic adults are limited. This study provides descriptive data for a cohort of 155 autistic adults (mean age = 27.1 years, SD = 11.9) of average IQ on the short-form version of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales and the Mini Social Phobia Inventory. Also included were 79 non-ASD participants (mean age = 26.2, SD = 10.2) who completed the mini-SPIN. A substantial percentage (39–46%) of autistic adults scored within the ‘Moderate’ to ‘Extremely Severe’ range on the DASS-21. The DASS-21 would be a valuable rapid screening device for these comorbid conditions in autistic adults.
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Notes
As these reported diagnoses were not independently verified in our study, we could not perform additional analyses such as using their DASS-21 and mini-SPIN scores to predict these diagnostic categories.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a Flinders Research Grant and the Hamish Ramsay Fund. We gratefully acknowledge Emily Barnett for assistance with data collection.
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Y-HN, NB, and RY developed the study concept. RF collected most of the data. Y-HN performed the analyses. Y-HN and NB drafted the paper, and RY and RF provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the paper for submission.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Nah, YH., Brewer, N., Young, R.L. et al. Brief Report: Screening Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder for Anxiety and Depression. J Autism Dev Disord 48, 1841–1846 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3427-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3427-3