ArticleAutism : the international journal of research and practice2024
The relationship between camouflaging and mental health: Are there differences among subgroups in autistic adults?
Article in Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Autistic Traits and Camouflaging: A Meta-Analysis.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2026Pooled it
- A meta-analytic review of quantification methods for camouflaging behaviors in autistic and neurotypical individuals.Scientific reports · 2025Pooled it
- Are There Sex or Gender Differences in Autistic Characteristics? An Umbrella Systematic Review.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Does Camouflaging Predict Functioning, Distress, and Quality of Life for Autistic Adults?Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- PTSD Symptoms Are Associated with a Greater Use of Social Camouflaging Strategies in an Eating Disorder Sample with Elevated Autistic Traits.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Large-scale neural network compensation associated with camouflaging in trait autism and its potential mental health costs.Molecular autism · 2026Article
- Masking, social context and perceived stress in autistic adults: An ecological momentary assessment study.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2025Article
- Autistic eye contact? A hermeneutic phenomenological multicenter study of the similarities and differences in eye-contact experiences between adults with and without autism.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2025Article
- "I need them for my autism, but I don't know why": Exploring the friendship experiences of autistic children in UK primary schools.Autism & developmental language impairmentsArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
lay abstractWhen autistic people use strategies to hide their autistic characteristics, we call this camouflaging. Autistic adults suggested that camouflaging can result in mental health difficulties. That is, people who report to camouflage also report mental health difficulties. However, since there are many differences between autistic people, this relationship may also differ between subgroups. Therefore, in this study we investigated whether camouflaging and mental health difficulties are related and whether this relationship is equal for all autistic adults. For this study, 352 autistic adults aged 30-84 years filled in the Dutch Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire to measure camouflaging and the Symptom Checklist-90 Revised to measure mental health difficulties. We found that camouflaging was moderately related to mental health difficulties. This means that people who report more camouflaging also report more mental health difficulties. When we looked closer, we found that this relationship was strong for only a small subgroup of autistic adults. In most other autistic adults, there was a small or no relationship between camouflaging and mental health difficulties. Therefore, it is important that clinicians are aware of camouflaging and its possible relationship with mental health difficulties, but that they do not generalize the negative consequences to everyone.
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