By Eric Levine, Ed.D with Becky Shipkosky

Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, refers to a neurodevelopmental difference with which about 1% of the world’s population (World Health Organization, 2023) and 2.2% of US adults are diagnosed (Centers for Disease Control, 2023). ASD is accompanied by comorbidities in 50 to 70% of autistic people (Hours et al., 2022), many of which are mental health and behavioral disorders, including:

In and of itself, autism is not a condition to be cured or recovered from, but certain aspects of life, including mental health, can be made easier and more manageable with proper support. Recent research indicates that mental health services are a tremendous piece of the support puzzle for autistic adults (Chan, Doran, 2023), and access to such services is woefully limited but growing (Maddox, Gaus, 2019).

At the most basic level, as Maddox and Gaus (2019) articulate, “Untreated psychiatric conditions in autistic adults are associated with a host of negative outcomes, including adaptive functioning impairments, difficulties with employment and independent living, and poor quality of life.” This unequivocally makes the case for helping autistic adults address mental health concerns, but it doesn’t get to the heart of why it’s so important to provide........

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