Skip to main content

BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Autism
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1506057
This article is part of the Research Topic Siblinghood Through Any Disability: The State of the Art and Future Directions View all articles

"His brain works in a different way": Siblings' Understanding of Autism Date of 2 nd re-submission: 17 th January 2025

Provisionally accepted
Krister Fjermestad Krister Fjermestad *Nora Hjelde Lervik Nora Hjelde Lervik
  • University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

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

    Siblings of autistic children are at increased risk of mental health problems. Lack of autism knowledge may contribute to this risk. We examined siblings' autism knowledge using the Sibling Knowledge Interview (SKI) conducted by clinicians before a sibling intervention. The sample comprised 28 siblings (61% boys; 39% girls) aged 8 to 12 years. All had a brother or sister with a clinically confirmed autism diagnosis. Audiotaped recordings of the interviews were transcribed and analyzed thematically. We identified six main themes: (1) definition, including diagnostic label, localization, explanation, and etiology, (2) regulation-, behavior-, social-, and cognition-related challenges, (3) strengths, (4) health service and family-based interventions, (5) misconceptions, and (6) lack of knowledge. Siblings displayed some knowledge about the key aspects of autism but also expressed insecurity, lack of knowledge, confusion, and misconceptions. Siblings displayed a narrow vocabulary to describe their brother's or sister's autism diagnosis. Few siblings provided elaborate and rich answers.Several siblings provided vague descriptions. The youngest siblings had particularly few verbally rich answers and displayed limited knowledge. The findings indicate that siblings need more knowledge about their brother's or sister's autism diagnosis. Research is needed on how this information should be provided.

    Keywords: Siblings, knowledge, qualitative research, Children, autism

    Received: 07 Oct 2024; Accepted: 24 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Fjermestad and Lervik. 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: Krister Fjermestad, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    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.