Petty, Stephanie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1453-3313, Allen, Shannon, Pickup, Hannah and Woodier, Bethannie (2023) A blog-based study of autistic adults’ experiences of aloneness and connection and the interplay with wellbeing: corpus-based and thematic analyses. Autism in Adulthood, 5 (4). pp. 437-449.

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Abstract

Background: Autistic adults appear to be more vulnerable to mental ill health, with loneliness being a variable associated with multiple outcomes of poorer wellbeing. However, a description of meaningful social connection that is suitable for autistic adults is missing from this research, along with a missing understanding of the conditions that contribute to wellbeing.
Methods: In this study, autistic adults’ experiences of connectedness and aloneness were systematically searched for within data collected from blogs. This contributed a creative method to hear the viewpoint of autistic adults. Corpus-based and thematic analyses explored the descriptions and contexts of relationships. A total of 16 autistic authors contributed views.
Results: Social connection was desired and was achieved through self-acceptance and rejecting deficit-based views of being autistic, and selectively choosing important relationships. Meaningful social connection changed over time, being more difficult to attain in childhood, and benefiting from self-learning and effortfully applying neuro-normative skills in social communication. Loneliness was only described alongside other causes of unhappiness and was not associated with being autistic.
Conclusions: The findings offer some explanation for the high estimates of both loneliness and mental ill health for autistic adults. We consider the implications for autistic individuals, clinicians, educators and researchers. We are also cautious not to imply that these views reflect all autistic people. The findings suggest that improvements are needed in society in order to share communication differences and relationship expectations for autistic individuals to be accepted and valued.

Keywords
autism spectrum disorder, adults, mental health, wellbeing, loneliness, corpus-based analysis, thematic analysis, qualitative research, blogs

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2022.0073
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/7515

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