Brief Reports: Influence of Friendship on Loneliness Among Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Japan.
Motofumi Sumiya, Atsushi Senju
PMID 37022581WHAT IT FOUND
Adolescents with autism reported higher loneliness than peers, and this difference was fully explained by lower companionship scores.
For therapists, this suggests that facilitating shared activities and time spent together with friends may be more critical for reducing loneliness than addressing conflict or communication skills alone.
Key findings
01Adolescents with ASD reported significantly higher emotional, social, and global loneliness compared to non-typically developing peers.
02The difference in global loneliness between groups was fully mediated by companionship, meaning lower levels of spending time together with friends accounted for the higher loneliness in the ASD group.
03Within the ASD group, positive friendship qualities significantly predicted lower loneliness, while negative qualities like conflict did not.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The sample size was small, particularly for the within-group analyses, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The questionnaires used were translated for the study and had not been previously standardized for the Japanese population. Some subscales of the Friendship Qualities Scale showed lower internal consistency than in previous studies, suggesting the tool may not be fully optimized for the ASD population. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot definitively prove that improving companionship will reduce loneliness, only that the two are associated.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the HUSM Grant-in-Aid. No conflicts of interest were declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that reducing social conflict or improving communication skills will alleviate loneliness in adolescents with autism. The study found that companionship, or time spent together in shared activities, was the specific factor that explained the difference in loneliness between groups.