Milner, Victoria;
Mandy, Will;
Happé, Francesca;
Colvert, Emma;
(2022)
Sex differences in predictors and outcomes of camouflaging: Comparing diagnosed autistic, high autistic trait and low autistic trait young adults.
Autism
10.1177/13623613221098240.
(In press).
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Abstract
LAY ABSTRACT: Many autistic people use strategies that help them adapt in social situations and hide behaviours that may seem different to non-autistic individuals - this is called camouflaging. Camouflaging may help autistic people fit in socially; however, it might also lead to poorer well-being. It has been suggested that autistic females camouflage more than autistic males. This article explored differences between males and females who have an autism diagnosis, have characteristics of autism but no diagnosis and those with few autistic characteristics. It is important to include these groups as camouflaging may make it more difficult to get an autism diagnosis and therefore make it less likely a person will receive support. We found that autistic women camouflaged more than all other groups. The group with few autistic characteristics (males and females) camouflaged the least. Loneliness was found to be a possible reason for camouflaging for the diagnosed autistic group only. In terms of outcomes related to camouflaging, it was found that those who camouflaged most had a lower quality of life; this was true of all groups. This tells us that there may be different reasons to camouflage, and different outcomes related to camouflaging for those with many characteristics of autism (including those with a diagnosis), and those with few. It is important that clinicians, teachers, parents and other stakeholders are aware of the negative outcomes associated with camouflaging so that more support can be provided for those who need it.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Sex differences in predictors and outcomes of camouflaging: Comparing diagnosed autistic, high autistic trait and low autistic trait young adults |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/13623613221098240 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221098240 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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). |
| Keywords: | autism, camouflaging, compensation, female autism, sex differences in autism |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10150293 |
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