A new study suggests college students with autism have dramatically higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to their peers. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo
College students with autism have dramatically higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to their peers, a new study says.
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of college students with autism suffer from anxiety, compared with just over 9% of their peers without autism, researchers reported recently in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Likewise, nearly half (48%) report depression, compared to nearly 8% of their peers, results show.
“What we found is really staggering — autistic individuals endorse much higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to their non-autistic peers,” lead researcher Diego Aragon-Guevara, a doctoral student in psychology at Binghamton University, State University of New York, said in a news release.
The results show that teens with autism face special challenges in the transition to college and need more mental health support, researchers said.
“We want to provide the best support for them and to make sure that they have a college experience, where they get a lot out of it, but also feel comfortable,” Aragon-Guevara said.
For the study, his team analyzed data from an ongoing survey of college students in the U.S. and Canada. The data included nearly 150,000 students from