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Yearly Archives: 2020
Welcome to Marisa!
A huge welcome to Marisa McKinlay, who has recently joined the STAR team as a PhD student.
Marisa will be looking at social issues for autistic adolescents. As an experienced Speech and Language Therapist, she is passionate about supporting communication and how environments can be changed to allow increased social engagement where desired. Her research aims to work with autistic students and those around them, identifying enabling factors and barriers to social participation in secondary school.
Marisa is supervised by Dr Eilidh Cage, Dr Catherine Grainger and Dr Mary Stewart (Heriot-Watt). We’re looking forward to getting started!
Marisa McKinlay
Marisa McKinlay, PhD Student
Marisa is a part-time PhD student, looking at issues for autistic adolescents. As an experienced Speech and Language Therapist, she is passionate about supporting communication and how environments can be changed to allow increased social engagement. Her research aims to work with autistic young people and those around them, identifying enabling factors and barriers to participation in secondary school. She is supervised by Dr Eilidh Cage, Dr Catherine Grainger and Dr Mary Stewart (Heriot-Watt).
Welcome to Dr Botha plus new paper published
We are delighted to welcome Dr Monique Botha to the STAR team as a Post-Doctoral Fellow, funded by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) via the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science.
Monique’s research to date has focused on the role of minority stress, stigma, and discrimination in the mental health outcomes of autistic people. Further, Monique’s recently finished PhD in Psychology from the University of Surrey investigated whether autistic community connectedness buffers against the impact of these extra stresses. As an autistic autism researcher, Monique is passionate about a socially just, ethical, and engaged form of science, which aims for emancipation and equality.
Additionally, Monique has just had a new paper published, entitled “”Autism is me”: an investigation of how autistic individuals make sense of autism and stigma”. This qualitative research looked closely at how autistic people make sense of being autistic and the stigma often attached to autism. Twenty autistic adults shared their experiences and spoke of how autism was just part of who they were, yet society often viewed autism as something negative. This feeling could cause tension and personal conflicts as autistic people have to figure out when and who it is safe to tell that they are autistic. The participants also talked about the need to reframe others’ understanding of autism.
You should be able to read the paper by visiting this link or contact Monique via email (m.d.botha@stir.ac.uk).
Dr Monique Botha, Research Fellow
Monique’s research focuses on the role of minority stress, stigma, and discrimination in the mental health outcomes of autistic people. As an autistic autism researcher, Monique is passionate about a socially just, ethical, and engaged form of science, which aims for emancipation and equality. Monique currently has a 3-year Leverhulme Fellowship where they will be examining dehumanisation and interpretation bias in autism researchers.
New open-access position paper on Social Prescribing for Autistic people
Social Prescribing (SP) is the referral of patients to non-clinical services for practical, physical or psychosocial support. Recent guidelines from the National Health Service England mean that SP will become commonplace for people with complex healthcare needs. Autistic adults make up 1% of the population and commonly have co-existing physical and mental health conditions, therefore they are likely to be referred to SP services. As yet, no studies have examined the efficacy of SP for autistic adults. In this letter, we review the existing literature examining the efficacy of SP in the general population. We further examine the factors that should be considered when offering SP to autistic adults in order to optimise outcomes.
Researchers: Rebecca A. Charlton 
, Catherine J. Crompton , Amanda Roestorf , Christopher Torry , The Autistica Physical Health and Ageing Study Group
First published: 27 April 2020
Open access article available here: https://amrcopenresearch.org/articles/2-19/v1
New open-access research paper on Self-guided Mindfulness to alleviate anxiety in autistic adults
Anxiety in autism is an important target for psychological therapies because it is very common and because it significantly impacts upon quality of life and well-being. Growing evidence suggests that cognitive behaviour therapies and mindfulness-based therapies can help autistic individuals learn to manage feelings of anxiety but access to such therapies remains problematic. In the current pilot study, we examined whether existing online cognitive behaviour therapy and mindfulness-based therapy self-help tools can help reduce anxiety in autistic adults. Specifically, 35 autistic adults were asked to try either an existing online cognitive behaviour therapy (n = 16) or mindfulness-based therapy (n = 19) programme while a further 19 autistic adults served as a waitlist comparison group. A first important finding was that 23 of the 35 (66%) participants who tried the online tools completed them, suggesting that such tools are, in principle, acceptable to many autistic adults. In addition, adults in the cognitive behaviour therapy and mindfulness-based therapy conditions reported significant decreases in anxiety over 3 and to some extent also 6 months that were less apparent in the waitlist group of participants. On broader measures of mental health and well-being, the benefits of the online tools were less apparent. Overall, the results suggest that online self-help cognitive behaviour therapy and mindfulness-based therapy tools should be explored further as a means of providing cost-effective mental health support to at least those autistic individuals who can engage effectively with such online tools.
Researchers: Sebastian B Gaigg, Paul E Flaxman, Gracie McLaven, Ritika Shah, Dermot M Bowler, Brenda Meyer, Amanda Roestorf, Corinna Haenschel, Jacqui Rodgers, Mikle South
First published: 08 April 2020
Open access article available here: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/31121