Rivera Rachel A, Bennetto Loisa
Department of Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States.
Front Psychiatry. 2023 Sep 6;14:1243657. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1243657. eCollection 2023.
Autistic people have long been conceptualized from a deficit-based model of disability, but recent self-advocates and scholars have asserted the importance of recognizing autism as both a disability and an important part of a person's social identity. The autistic identity is subject to specific stigma and stressors beyond everyday discrimination and prejudice, which can have many downstream implications on mental health and well-being. Prior research on camouflaging has explained both quantitatively and qualitatively how autistic people conform to norms and mask their autistic traits to better fit in with non-autistic societal standards. Given this paradigm shift in understanding autistic peoples' lived experiences, researchers must also begin to reshape the theories guiding their work in order to improve diagnosis, intervention, and supports. This review examines the extant research on identity-related stigma and camouflaging and their subsequent impacts on mental health outcomes in autism. A model is proposed integrating identity-based theories-specifically the social model of disability, social identity theory, and minority stress model-to explain relationships across research areas and better explain the experiences of autistic people. We discuss how identity-based theories can be applied in autism research to better understand the impacts of stigma and camouflaging on autistic peoples' lived experiences and reduce disparities in their mental health outcomes.
长期以来，人们一直从基于缺陷的残疾模式来理解自闭症患者，但最近，自闭症自我倡导者和学者们强调，认识到自闭症既是一种残疾，也是个人社会身份的重要组成部分，这一点很重要。自闭症身份面临着日常歧视和偏见之外的特定污名和压力源，这可能对心理健康和幸福感产生许多下游影响。先前关于伪装的研究已经从定量和定性两个方面解释了自闭症患者如何遵守规范并掩盖自己的自闭症特征，以便更好地符合非自闭症社会标准。鉴于在理解自闭症患者生活经历方面的这种范式转变，研究人员还必须开始重塑指导其工作的理论，以改进诊断、干预和支持。这篇综述考察了关于与身份相关的污名和伪装及其对自闭症心理健康结果后续影响的现有研究。我们提出了一个整合基于身份的理论——特别是残疾的社会模式、社会身份理论和少数群体压力模型——的模型，以解释各研究领域之间的关系，并更好地解释自闭症患者的经历。我们讨论了基于身份的理论如何应用于自闭症研究，以更好地理解污名和伪装对自闭症患者生活经历的影响，并减少他们心理健康结果方面的差异。
