Barriers to Mental Healthcare for Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults: An Investigation of Number, Severity and Type of Barriers Encountered.
Robyn C Ball, Amanda L Richdale, Lauren P Lawson and 1 others
Most adults, autistic or not, hit multiple barriers to mental healthcare.
Autistic people, especially those with a formal diagnosis, reported more barriers and rated them more severely. Cost, long waits, and not knowing how to find help were the worst for everyone.
Key findings
1Autistic-diagnosed participants reported significantly more total barriers and rated all three barrier types (person, provider, system) as more severe than non-autistic participants. Autistic-self-identified participants also rated person and provider barriers more severely than non-autistic participants.
2The most severe and most common barriers for all participants, regardless of autism status, were cost, long waiting times, the steps to getting help being overwhelming, and not knowing how to find a suitable service.
3Five specific barriers (communication not understood, behaviour misunderstood, practitioner lacked knowledge of autism, sensory discomfort, and autism/condition not recognised) were experienced significantly more often by autistic-diagnosed than non-autistic participants. Effect sizes were small for all except sensory discomfort, which was medium.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Self-selected sample recruited through advertisements and organisation notices, so people who experienced more barriers may have been more motivated to respond Only 7 participants reported an intellectual disability, so findings do not extend to that group Predominantly female (71.2%) and overrepresented late-diagnosed autistic adults (54.3% diagnosed within 2 years of the survey) Autism status was self-reported, though additional questions probed the basis of self-identification Cross-sectional design: captures a snapshot of barriers, not a trajectory or the effect of any intervention Mean severity scores can appear inflated when a participant reports only a few barriers but rates them highly Data collected 2021 to 2022, overlapping with pandemic-related service disruptions that may have worsened cost and waiting-time barriers
Declared interests
No funding received. No conflicts of interest declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the group differences as evidence that autistic people face unique barriers. Twenty-five of thirty barrier items showed no significant difference in how often they were experienced across groups, and the most severe barriers (cost, long waits, not knowing how to find help) were rated similarly by everyone. The differences are in how severe the barriers felt, not in whether they occurred.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →