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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Autism
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1461704
This article is part of the Research Topic Improving Outcomes in Autism Spectrum Disorders for Adults View all 5 articles

Patterns and correlates of two-year change in depressive symptoms for autistic adults

Provisionally accepted
Shuting Zheng Shuting Zheng 1,2*Cristan Farmer Cristan Farmer 3Julie L. Taylor Julie L. Taylor 4Ryan Adams Ryan Adams 5Lindsay Olson Lindsay Olson 2Somer Bishop Somer Bishop 2
  • 1 University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
  • 2 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States
  • 3 Neurodevelopmental and Behavioral Phenotyping Service, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States
  • 4 Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
  • 5 Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background. Autistic adults are at elevated risk for depression. However, longitudinal data on the trajectory of depressive symptoms and its associated factors in autistic adults are scarce. Methods. A community sample of 315 autistic adults participated in a two-year longitudinal study from the beginning of (March 2020) to the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2022). They provided five waves of data on self-reported depressive symptoms and sociodemographic and life circumstances information. Results. Multilevel model results showed that autistic adults reported large between-individual variability in self-reported depressive symptoms, and on average, they experienced an increase (i.e., worsening) in self-reported depressive symptoms over the two years of the study. Autistic adults with a depression history and lower annual household income reported higher levels of depressive symptoms. More importantly, autistic adults reported lower depressive symptoms when they were engaged in work or school, and those who had higher levels of depressive symptoms at the start of the study were more reactive to changes in work or school participation. Conclusions. Findings from the current study have implications for potential venues of depression treatment in autistic adults around promoting employment/education, providing symptom monitoring, and addressing mental health disparities for those with lower incomes.

    Keywords: Depression, Longitudinal trajectories, Employment, School, income level

    Received: 09 Jul 2024; Accepted: 30 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zheng, Farmer, Taylor, Adams, Olson and Bishop. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Shuting Zheng, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.