Psychoeducation for Older Adults With Autism

Summary

Until recently, autism in older adults went unrecognised. Although there has been more attention to autism in older adults in recent years, there is still a lot of unfamiliarity with the phenomenon and underdiagnosis in (mental) health care. Many care providers are reluctant to diagnose autism in later life, due to a lack of knowledge about autism in older adults and because there is still very little scientific knowledge available for this target group. Although several multidisciplinary guidelines for autism in adults prescribe that after the diagnosis psycho-education is the first step in treatment, psycho-education is still only offered in a few places in the Netherlands. Psycho-education is important to help older people gain knowledge about their autism, to help them understand and accept this diagnosis, in order to subsequently make the treatment of the problems, with which they turn to the mental health care, more appropriate and effective.

The aim of this study is to contribute to better recognition and diagnosis of autism among older adults. This research also aims to improve a psycho-education program for older adults and investigate its effects.

The scientific research question is whether training in ASD for health care professionals results in better recognition and detection of ASD in older adults, and whether participation in the psycho-education course for older adults, who have been diagnosed with autism, or have received a probability diagnosis ASD, contributes to improvement of mental health and quality of life.

Conditions

• Autism Spectrum Disorder

Interventions

OTHER

Training in detection and diagnosis of ASD

To improve detection and diagnosis of ASD the participating mental health institutes will be trained by the research group on how to detect and diagnose autism in older adults. The basis of the ASD training involves two separate training sessions. Part one focuses on recognition and detection of ASD, specifically in older adults, and will be offered to the entire teams of the participating centres. The second part of the training focuses on the diagnosis of ASD and as such is offered primarily to diagnosticians. Follow up will consist of monthly recurring options for online consultation during the entire project to discuss clinical cases by experts in ASD in older adults from PersonaCura, clinical centre of excellence for personality and developmental disorders in older adults (dr. A. Videler and R. Wilting).

OTHER

PE program

An adapted PE program for older adults with a (probability) diagnosis of ASD. The PE program consists of eight, two-hour group meetings on a weekly basis.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• GGZ Breburg

  collaborator OTHER

• Tilburg University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Arjan Videler, Dr. · Tilburg University, GGz Breburg

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

55 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-09-12

Primary Completion

2027-03-31

Completion

2027-03-31

Countries

• Netherlands

Study Locations