'Who Am I?': An Exploratory Study of the Relationships Between Identity, Acculturation and Mental Health in Autistic Adolescents.

The study used only 24 adolescents, mostly male, so findings are exploratory and not generalisable. The design was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that identity or cultural alignment causes mental health difficulties. Participants were recruited through mainstream schools and a community service, and opt-in consent may have excluded those with poorer mental health or identity issues. Those in specialist provisions or home education were not included. The Autism Identity Scale autistic subscale had only acceptable internal consistency and was not widely used. Splitting participants into four acculturation groups made group sizes very small, which limits interpretation. Applying an acculturation model to autism is controversial, and lack of alignment may reflect social communication difficulty rather than cultural preference.

Do not conclude that helping autistic adolescents align with non-autistic culture improves mental health. The acculturation groups did not differ significantly on mental health scores, and the more positive self statements finding was a secondary comparison in a small exploratory study.