Social and nonsocial reward moderate the relation between autism symptoms and loneliness in adults with ASD, depression, and controls.
Gloria T Han, Andrew J Tomarken, Katherine O Gotham
PMID 30825364WHAT IT FOUND
In adults with autism, loneliness was the strongest link to depressive symptoms.
People with less pleasure in social and everyday activities were lonelier regardless of autism symptoms; people with more pleasure showed a stronger autism-loneliness link.
Key findings
01Compared with never-depressed controls, adults with ASD and depressed adults reported similarly lower social and non-social pleasure.
02People with less pleasure in social or everyday activities were lonelier regardless of autism symptoms, while people with more pleasure showed a stronger link between autism symptoms and loneliness.
03Loneliness was the strongest predictor of depressive symptoms in the combined sample, the typically developing sample, and the ASD group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study measured associations at one time, so it cannot show that loneliness causes depression, that pleasure causes loneliness, or that changing either would improve symptoms. All participants needed verbal IQ at least 80 and reading level at least fifth grade, and people with psychotic, bipolar, or current substance use disorders were excluded, so findings may not apply to adults with more severe cognitive or psychiatric presentations. Many in the ASD group had lifetime depression (73% met criteria for lifetime depressive disorders), which makes it hard to separate autism-related differences from depression-related differences. Pleasure and loneliness were self-reported, so higher scores may reflect insight or awareness rather than actual pleasure.
Declared interests
The paper is tagged as supported by NIH extramural and non-U.S. government research; no author conflicts-of-interest statement is included in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that loneliness causes depression or that increasing pleasure will improve mood. The study measured associations at one time and did not test any treatment.