University of South Alabama, USA.
Autism. 2024 Nov;28(11):2793-2805. doi: 10.1177/13623613241240183. Epub 2024 Mar 21.
Anxiety, depression, and suicidality are major concerns among college students, though less is known about these constructs in autistic college students. Given the rising number of autistic individuals entering college, adequate screening and diagnosis of mental health difficulties is necessary to provide care to this population. For example, despite widespread usage of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), it is unknown if the two instruments accurately measure depression and anxiety the same way between non-autistic and autistic individuals. Thus, the current study was the first to examine how these instruments measure depression and anxiety symptoms in autistic versus non-autistic college students. Utilizing tests of construct measurement in a sample of autistic ( = 477) and non-autistic ( = 429) university students aged 18-29, results showed that while the GAD-7 and PHQ-9 appear to be accurately capturing anxiety and depression in autistic college students, the PHQ-9 item assessing suicidality was found to be measuring different things. This indicates that autistic college students are not interpreting this question the way non-autistic students are, and thus, the measure is failing to capture suicidality in autistic people. Future investigators should continue to assess the appropriateness of using common screening measures, originally created by non-autistic people, in autistic populations.
焦虑、抑郁和自杀意念是大学生群体中主要存在的问题，而对于自闭症大学生群体来说，这些问题的研究相对较少。鉴于越来越多的自闭症患者进入大学，对他们的心理健康问题进行充分的筛查和诊断十分必要，这是为该群体提供关怀的基础。例如，尽管人们广泛使用 PHQ-9（患者健康问卷-9）和 GAD-7（广泛性焦虑障碍-7），但我们尚不清楚这两种工具是否能以相同的方式准确衡量自闭症和非自闭症个体的抑郁和焦虑程度。因此，本研究首次探讨了这些工具在自闭症和非自闭症大学生中测量抑郁和焦虑症状的方式。本研究利用自闭症（ = 477）和非自闭症（ = 429）大学生样本中的结构测量检验，结果表明，虽然 GAD-7 和 PHQ-9 似乎能够准确地测量自闭症大学生的焦虑和抑郁，但 PHQ-9 中评估自杀意念的项目却被发现测量的是不同的东西。这表明自闭症大学生对这个问题的理解方式与非自闭症学生不同，因此，该测量方法未能捕捉到自闭症人群中的自杀意念。未来的研究者应继续评估在自闭症人群中使用原本由非自闭症人群创建的常见筛查工具的适当性。
