Does your child with Autism Spectrum Disorder experience anxiety or challenging behaviour?

[Chrisf]

In the Irish Centre for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Research (ICAN), we are looking for parents of children between the ages of 3 – 18 years old with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who experience any of the above symptoms to take part in a study. If your child does not present with any of these symptoms, you can still take part. As we want to learn about why some children with ASD experience anxiety and challenging behaviour and some do not.


Please follow the link to take part: Challenging behaviour and ASD


Christopher Flynn (MSc student, NUI Galway).

Supervisors: Dr. Geraldine Leader and Dr. Arlene Mannion.

 

[Fino]

There are children with ASD who do not experience anxiety or challenging behavior?

Isn't that sort of like a person with Major Depressive Disorder who does not experience depression?

 

[RosaViolet]

There are children with ASD who do not experience anxiety or challenging behavior?

My daughter had a useless course of group CBT. They gave her piece of paper with names of emotions and body sensations and asked to class them as anxiety or not anxiety. Guess what happened?

She is officially diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder, anxiety is a daily reality of her life but she doesn't know it is anxiety.

Like in the CRAE study
Know your normal research: four out of five young people with autism experience mental health issues
Know your normal research: four out of five young people with autism experience mental health issues
The research forms part of a project undertaken by the young people to promote an understanding of what wellbeing looks like for children and young people with autism. In particular the project focuses on how a ‘normal day’ for someone with autism might be very different from that of a neurotypical person.

• 76% said that when they are not experiencing mental health issues they believed they felt more under strain than their non-autistic peers.
• Only 4% are extremely confident in knowing who to ask for help if they are experiencing a mental health issue.
• 90% felt uncomfortable disclosing mental health issues to education professionals.

Dr Laura Crane, one of the authors of the research added;

“Young autistic people felt that their ‘normal’ was different to that of other people and, strikingly, rather negative in nature. For example, young people highlighted how they generally felt unhappy and depressed; worthless; under strain; unable to overcome their difficulties; unable to face up to problems; and lacked confidence.

“It is not acceptable for unhappiness and depression to be seen as the 'normal' state for young autistic people.."