Exploration of masking in autistic women and the presence of anxious and depressive symptoms.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15257/ehquidad.2023.0014Keywords:
Autism, gender, masking, depression, anxietyAbstract
Autism in women is a relatively new research phenomenon, this considering that research on the topic has been focused on men from the beginning (Gould, 2017). It was not until recently that was considered the existence of women on the autism spectrum, this has resulted in women being diagnosed even less at similar levels of autistic traits (Leedham, et. al., 2019), also, the social expectation related to gender had make that autistic women mask more their trats than autistic men (Hull, et. al., 2019), the previously mentioned adds to the reasons for a late diagnosis in women. The objective of the present study was to know the level of masking in a population of 37 autistic women without intellectual disability and their age of diagnosis and presence of symptoms of depression and anxiety. The study was descriptive, non-experimental and cross-sectional. A semi-structured interview was conducted where the sociodemographic data and details of the diagnosis were identified. It was used an elaborated questionary to identify the autistic masking, the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck 1988) and the Beck Depression Inventory 2 (BDI-2; Beck, 1996). In the results obtained, it was found that the 91.9% of the mask the autistic traits; in addition, 2.7% was diagnosed with depression, 8.1% with anxiety and 78.4% with both anxiety and depression.
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