Loneliness and Autism: The Invisible Issue
18th June 2019
The 17th to the 21st June marks Loneliness Awareness Week in the UK; a week aimed at reducing stigma around loneliness and helping people to connect. Loneliness has been suggested to be as harmful to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and can have an enormous impact on our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. Whilst loneliness is a massive issue across many groups of our society, including in elderly and sick people, it has also been highlighted that there is a massive issue of loneliness in the autistic community.
Some autistic people may find it more difficult to form and maintain relationships than neurotypical people. Struggles with busy areas, loud noises and overwhelming smells can leave some social spaces difficult to navigate for autistic people, especially in places like pubs, clubs and bars, which are sometimes overwhelming for most of us. This, combined with the anxiety that many autistic people manage daily, can make going out and meeting people socially quite inaccessible. In this way, if an autistic person doesn’t have strong social support and people around them, they can very easily become socially isolated.
Social isolation can lead to loneliness if there is a gap between the person’s desired and actual levels of social contact. There is a common misconception that all autistic people prefer being alone, and would not enjoy or seek relationships or friendships. Therefore, even when an autistic person becomes socially isolated, it is sometimes assumed that they may not get lonely.
On the contrary, many autistic people want more connections and enjoy social interactions, and therefore experience loneliness in a very real way. In fact, research in April 2018 found that autistic people are one of the most lonely and isolated groups in the United Kingdom. Autistic people are four times more likely to be lonely than the neurotypical population and as many as 79% of autistic people report feeling socially isolated.
Studies have found that increased loneliness in adults with autistic spectrum conditions is associated with increased depression and anxiety, and decreased life satisfaction and self-esteem, even when controlling for symptoms of autism. Therefore, it is a vital area that needs to be addressed when considering how to improve the daily lives of adults on the autistic spectrum.
There are many ways in which loneliness can be addressed in autistic people, and the national autistic society offer some great advice on reducing social isolation and increasing social interaction. You can find this here: https://www.autism.org.uk/about/communication/social-isolation.aspx
References:
https://www.autism.org.uk/about/communication/social-isolation.aspx
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1362361312474121?journalCode=auta