The Mental Health and Wellbeing of Autistic Young People (M-WAY)

Over the past few months, the MWAY team have been speaking to autistic young people and their parents as part of Stage 1 of the study. We’ve been doing this to try and understand why so many autistic young people experience anxiety and depression and what helps. We’ve spoken to nearly 50 people so far. We’re aware that to better understand autistic people’s lives we need to make sure we hear about the experiences of people from different backgrounds, including those who are often left out of autism research. In this post, MWAY team member Sarah reflects on her experience of seeking out diverse voices in the MWAY study. We’re also joined by Leon Allain, an autistic researcher on one of our sister studies, the Autism Transition to Adulthood (ATAG) project who offers his views on navigating diversity within autism research. Why is diversity important in autism research? Leon: ‘Around 1 in 100 people are autistic and come from a variety of backgrounds. However, in research this is not...

The MWAY project’s Young Persons Advisory Group (YPAG) recently had their first meeting! The YPAG is a group of autistic young people aged 13-19 who are shaping the project. In this first meeting, the YPAG gave us advice about how to do interviews with autistic young people and how to make sure we’re reaching young people from diverse backgrounds. After the meeting, we spoke to two YPAG members, Lily (16 years old) and Thee (15 years old) about why research into autistic young people’s mental health is important to them and why we need to involve young people in research. Research into autistic young people’s mental health is important Thee emphasised that mental health issues are very common for autistic people and can have a big impact on autistic people’s lives, especially for young people who are going through a pivotal stage in their life. ‘The likelihood of suffering from anxiety and depression as an autistic young person is very high. Personally, I have suffered a lot from...

Sarah and Erin from the M-WAY team attended the annual meeting of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR). This year the conference was held in Melbourne from the 15th to 18th of May. INSAR is currently the world's largest autism research conference and attracts researchers, clinicians, and stakeholders from around the world! This was Erin’s first time attending INSAR and her first-time presenting research related to her PhD, in which she is exploring the risk and protective factors associated with self-harm in autistic young people. This was the sixth INSAR that Sarah has attended, having previously presented on her PhD research into autistic people’s parenthood experiences and her pre-doctoral research into autism and bilingualism. Attending the conference was a valuable opportunity for Sarah and Erin to hear about the latest research and catch up with colleagues.  The conference covered a broad range of topics including brain function, cognition, genetics, early de...

We're excited to announce that the M-WAY study has officially begun! Over the next three years we will be exploring autistic young people's mental health. In particular, we're interested in why many autistic young people experience anxiety and depression, and what helps them with their mental health.  We will be posting updates and any findings from our research on here in the upcoming months! Who are we? We're a neurodiverse team of researchers and clinical psychologists interested in improving autistic people's mental health (read more on our 'About the Team' page). Why are we interested in autistic young people's mental health? Autistic people often have mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, and this can have a big impact on health and wellbeing. At the moment, we don't have a good understanding of how and why these difficulties develop. This means that we don't have much information to help us develop mental health support f...