Journal article
Exploring the association between social camouflaging and self- versus caregiver-report discrepancies in anxiety and depressive symptoms in autistic and non-autistic socially-anxious adolescents
- Abstract:
- Social camouflaging in autism involves hiding social differences and autistic traits to fit in with neurotypical settings and is associated with poorer mental health in both autistic adolescents and adults. This study explored the association between self-reported social camouflaging behaviours and adolescents’ self-report of generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and depressive symptoms compared to caregiver reports. A clinical sample of 43 autistic and 39 non-autistic adolescents (14-19 years) without intellectual disability and matched on social anxiety, and their primary caregiver completed questionnaires reporting the young person’s autistic traits, GAD, and depression symptoms. Using Response Surface Analysis (RSA), congruence between adolescent and caregiver rated autistic traits, GAD, and depression symptoms were not associated with greater camouflaging scores. RSA parameters showed that camouflaging was greater when both adolescent and caregivers rated high levels of autistic traits and GAD symptoms, and when adolescents exceeded caregiver ratings on autistic traits, GAD, and depression symptoms. Adolescents who experience greater anxiety and autistic traits may engage in more (though less effective) social camouflaging behaviours, which in turn may contribute towards poorer mental health outcomes. Clinicians may benefit from collaboratively creating with adolescents a person-centred formulation that considers the associations between autistic traits, mental health outcomes.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 758.8KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1177/13623613241238251
Authors
- Publisher:
- SAGE Publications
- Journal:
- Autism More from this journal
- Volume:
- 28
- Issue:
- 10
- Pages:
- 2657-2674
- Publication date:
- 2024-03-15
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-02-15
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1461-7005
- ISSN:
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1362-3613
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1620439
- Local pid:
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pubs:1620439
- Deposit date:
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2024-02-19
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Lei et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
- Notes:
- This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version will be available online from a forthcoming edition of Autism.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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