M-WAY is underway!

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 for autistic people. 

Research that has been done so far has tended to focus on how autistic people's characteristics might influence mental health difficulties. There has been less research on how autistic people's relationship to their social and physical environment (e.g. noise levels, access to green spaces, relationships with other people) might influence their mental health. We want to better understand why some autistic young people develop anxiety and depression, so that we can better understand how to support them. We're especially interested in causes that are related to the person's environment, as it might be possible to change some of these and therefore help reduce anxiety and depression among autistic young people.


What will we be doing? 

Over the next year, we will be interviewing autistic young people and their parents to better understand their experience of anxiety and depression. What autistic young people and their parents tell us will help us decide the questions we want to focus on for the next stage of the project. This next stage, which will take place over the final two years of the project, will involve using large national datasets to explore these questions.

We think it is important that autistic people have a say in research that is about them. We are putting together two groups: a group of autistic young people and a group of adults with an interest in the research (policy makers, parents, autistic adults, clinicians, researchers). These groups will advise us on the research and shape the project throughout the three years. 

Follow us on this blog for regular updates!

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