5 news items this week
With municipal elections on March 18 approaching, the NVA sent a pamphlet to all municipalities. The message: make housing, employment, education, and transport more accessible for autistic people. Not as a favour, but as a fundamental right.
The AASPIRE Autistic Burnout Measure has been validated with 379 autistic adults and now reliably measures what many have long felt. The tool shows strong links with camouflaging, depression, and anxiety — and distinguishes autistic burnout from occupational burnout for the first time.
UCL researchers analysed therapy outcomes in 7,175 autistic adults. Most showed little improvement in anxiety and depression. Those with greater daily functioning difficulties and ethnic minority backgrounds had poorer outcomes. The conclusion: standard therapy needs better adaptation to autistic needs.
Bloomberg reports on the massive Swedish study of 2.8 million people: boys under ten are diagnosed three to four times more often than girls, but by adulthood the gap has nearly closed. This points to a diagnostic system that misses girls for years — not to a male condition.
Some researchers claim avoiding toxin exposure before pregnancy could help prevent autism. RFK Jr. even calls autism a 'preventable disease'. But the evidence is thin and the framing controversial: many autistic people point out that prevention rhetoric frames their existence as a problem.
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