Project Description:
Adult individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, suicide ideation, sleep problems, and health problems at higher rates than their peers without a developmental disability (Croen et al., 2015; Lai et al., 2019). Considering the current context of COVID-19, these individuals may face increased systemic issues that, in turn, increases psychological issues they may experience (Wang et al., 2020). Despite this, individuals with ASD possess unique strengths that could potentially buffer against the negative contextual factors experienced due to COVID-19. One potential strength, psychological flexibility (Hayes et al., 2011), is understudied in adults with ASD despite it being supported as a positive, buffering mechanism for poor mental health outcomes in neurotypical individuals (see Gloster et al., 2014 for epidemiological study). Examining psychological flexibility as a mechanism of positive mental health in adults with ASD could provide foundational findings on a working mechanism of mental health to enhance future interventions in this population.
This project aims to 1) Explore how psychological flexibility influences psychological distress in adults with ASD in the context of COVID-19 with a pilot epidemiological study; 2) Establish the dimensionality, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and the concurrent and convergent validity of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire II (AAQ-II) in adults with ASD; 3) Establish the dimensionality, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and the concurrent and convergent validity of the Brief Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (BEAQ) in adults with ASD; and 4) Provide research opportunities for undergraduate and/or graduate research assistants and UCEDD trainees to learn more about the intersection of mental health and intellectual/developmental disabilities.
Keyword(s):
Autism, mental health, psychological flexibility, Covid-19
