La Trobe

Coping-resilience profiles and experiences of stress in autistic adults

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posted on 2023-06-05, 01:31 authored by Melanie MuniandyMelanie Muniandy, Amanda RichdaleAmanda Richdale, Lauren LawsonLauren Lawson
Emerging studies allude to high stress in autistic adults. Considering the detrimental impact of stress on health outcomes, examining individual resources which may influence the extent to which stress is experienced (e.g., coping and resilience) is vital. Using a person-focused approach, this study aimed to identify coping-resilience profiles, and examine their relations to general perceived stress and daily hassles in a sample of autistic adults (N = 86; aged 19–74 years). Cluster analysis identified four coping-resilience profiles (i.e., high cope/ low resilience, low cope/ high resilience, engage cope/ high resilience, and disengage cope/ low resilience). The high cope/ low resilience and disengage cope/ low resilience groups had significantly higher general perceived stress than the remaining groups. No significant group differences were noted in relation to daily hassles. Jointly addressing coping and resilience may be beneficial on the perceived stress experienced in autistic adults. The use of coping-resilience profiles may also allow for the personalization of stress management and support options in the autistic adult population.

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation and participation of all autistic participants involved in this study. All authors acknowledge the financial support of the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC), established and supported under the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centers program. Melanie Muniandy is supported by an Autism CRC PhD scholarship while the position held by Lauren P. Lawson was funded by the Autism CRC at the time this research was conducted. Open access publishing facilitated by La Trobe University, as part of the Wiley La Trobe University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.

History

Publication Date

2022-11-01

Journal

Autism Research

Volume

15

Issue

11

Pagination

18p. (p. 2149-2166)

Publisher

Wiley

ISSN

1939-3792

Rights Statement

© 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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