Why do we need participatory research into autistic young people’s mental health?
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...