Coping-resilience profiles and experiences of stress in autistic adults.
Melanie Muniandy, Amanda L Richdale, Lauren P Lawson
PMID 36114687WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic adults with low resilience and high disengagement coping reported significantly higher general perceived stress than those with high resilience and engagement coping.
This suggests targeting resilience and reducing avoidance may help manage stress, though the cross-sectional design cannot prove causality.
Key findings
01Individuals in the disengage cope/low resilience and high cope/low resilience groups reported significantly higher general perceived stress compared to those in the low cope/high resilience and engage cope/high resilience groups.
02There were no significant differences between the coping-resilience profiles in terms of average daily hassles stress or COVID-19 related stress.
03Higher use of disengagement coping was associated with increased general perceived stress, whereas higher levels of resilience were related to reduced general and daily hassles stress.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study design was cross-sectional, so it cannot determine if low resilience causes high stress or if high stress reduces resilience. The sample size was relatively modest (n=86), which may limit the generalizability of the four identified profiles. The sample was overrepresented by female participants (66%), which may not reflect the broader autistic adult population. The study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is a unique large-scale stressor that may have influenced how participants reported their general stress and coping.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism and La Trobe University.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that teaching engagement coping or increasing resilience will definitively lower stress in your patients. The study is cross-sectional, meaning it shows an association between these traits and stress levels, but it does not prove that changing the traits causes the stress to decrease.