Receiving an autism diagnosis in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s or even 60s may seem daunting, but a new study finds that the age at which a person is diagnosed has little influence on their quality of life.
The so-called “late diagnosis” of autism has recently made headlines thanks to activist Christine McGuiness. Although autism is often diagnosed in childhood, it is increasingly being diagnosed in adults, especially among women.
Parents often wonder whether their child’s discovery of autism sooner or later will affect their child’s life in the long run. Many people who discover they are autistic as adults wonder what their lives would have been like had they known about it sooner.
Against this backdrop, the new study from researchers at the University of Bath and King’s College London is the first to examine whether the age at which a person realizes they are autistic is related to their quality of life, taking into account other crucial factors such as family income.
Researchers asked 300 autistic adults to report the age at which they discovered they were autistic, as well as detailed information about their sociodemographic background, such as current age, gender, ethnicity, relationship status, life status, educational level, employment status, family income and presence of other mental disorders. Participants’ level of autistic personality traits was also measured.
Participants then answered questions about different aspects of their quality of life, including physical, psychological, social and environmental aspects. For example, questions like, “To what extent do you feel your life is meaningful?” and “How satisfied are you with the support you receive from your friends?”
Results published in the journal Autism found that the relationship between the age at which one became aware of being autistic and different areas of quality of life was not statistically linked after accounting for other factors. In fact, other factors were more closely related to quality of life: autistic women reported better quality of life than autistic men, and people with additional mental disorders (eg, anxiety) reported worse quality of life.
Lucy Livingston, Principal Investigator at the University of Bath and Professor of Psychology at King’s College London, says: “More and more people are realizing that autism is a mental health problem: more and more people are discovering they are autistic for the first time in their age. adulthood, which can be life-changing. As we know that many people with autism experience very poor quality of life and well-being, this raises the question of whether finding out that someone is autistic at an earlier age improves outcomes.”
REFERENCE
Reexamining the association between an autistic learning age and adult outcomes