Mental health counseling is rated as most helpful by autistic adults: Service perspectives in adulthood.

The sample was small, with 40 adults from one southeastern United States research registry, so it may not represent autistic adults in other places. Participants needed an IQ of 70 or above and enough language to take part in interviews, so adults with lower cognitive ability or different communication needs were not represented. Service use was self-reported for only the past 2 years, so earlier services or whether participants were connected to multiple services were not captured. The study did not explain why services were rated most helpful, so it cannot show what makes counseling effective. Community participation was measured over one week with GPS and diaries, and one participant's activity space was removed from activity space analyses because it was exceptionally large due to work-related travel. The analysis of full-time employment included people who were capable of full-time work but may not have been working at the time. It is unknown whether employed participants secured jobs on their own or had earlier employment services.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The study received federal funding from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. Recruitment assistance came from a university autism research registry supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and data management was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the National Institutes of Health.

Do not conclude that mental health counseling improves community participation or employment. The study only observed that adults currently seeing a counselor visited more social and recreational places, and it did not test whether counseling caused this.