Perceived helpfulness of depression treatments among young adults with autism

Abstract

Currently available treatments for depression show limited effectiveness in adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) based on measures of symptom changes and clinician impressions. Perceived helpfulness is another metric that has been found to be useful for understanding treatment outcomes in the general population, but it has not yet been explored in adults with ASD. Thus, the current study collected online survey data to examine patient-perceived treatment helpfulness in a sample of 144 adults with ASD who reported that they were currently receiving communitybased treatment for depression. Findings indicate that while there was variability in the levels of perceived helpfulness for both medication and individual therapy, most adults with ASD perceived treatment to be at least moderately helpful. Notably, adults with ASD reported having been in treatment for a prolonged duration (5 to 6 years). Ordinal logistic regression models showed that adults with more depressive symptoms perceived treatments to be less helpful (i.e., medications: odds ratio [OR] = 0.92, 95% confidence interval[CI] = 0.89-0.95; individual therapy: OR = 0.95, 95% CI = 0.92-0.99). Moreover, women perceived medication as more helpful than men (OR = 2.33, 95% CI = 1.13-4.82). Other individual (i.e., age, race, education level) and treatment (i.e., treatment length, concurrent treatment) characteristics were not significantly associated with perceived helpfulness. These findings suggest that future studies may want to use perceived helpfulness, in addition to traditionally used objective outcomes, to understand patients' treatment experience and evaluate depression treatments for adults with ASD. Lay summary: Adults with autism are much more likely to be depressed than those without autism; therefore, effective depression treatments are necessary to improve mental health outcomes in this group. This online survey study found that most adults with autism felt that the depression treatments they were receiving in the community (i.e., medication and individual therapy) were helpful. Females and those with fewer symptoms of depression felt treatments were more helpful compared with males and those with more symptoms of depression. Our findings suggest that when examining whether treatments for depression are effective, it may be important to measure adults' feelings about the helpfulness of the treatments in addition to measuring changes in symptoms of depression.

Patterns in Medication Use for Treatment of Depression in Autistic Spectrum Disorder

“…A second report noted 40% of autistic youth took at least one psychiatric drug targeting comorbid mental illness, and up to 31% received at least two psychiatric medications (Feroe, et al, 2021). Specific to depression in autistic adults, Zheng et al 2021 noted among all patients receiving medicating, psychotherapy, or both, 85% received a psychotropic medication targeting symptoms of depression (Zheng, et al, 2021). Despite the frequency of psychiatric medication use targeting comorbid mental illness in autistic patients, little information is available describing specific drug use, dosing, and tolerability to inform this prescribing practice.…”