This talk will cover the link between autism and restrictive eating disorders in young people, drawing on the latest research with the aim of providing clinically useful insights.
Autistic young people are at significantly higher risk of developing eating disorders, particularly Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID); and are over-represented in eating disorder services. Research shows that around a quarter of patients being treated for AN qualify for an autism diagnosis; and up to a third of ARFID patients are autistic.
Despite evidence for a strong link between autism and restrictive eating disorders, many eating disorder clinicians report lacking knowledge of how to identify autism amongst their patients, and how to adapt their treatments for their autistic patients. This contributes to significant challenges for autistic people who develop eating disorders. Often their autism goes unrecognised; they commonly struggle to access eating disorder services; and their outcomes from eating disorder treatment tend to be worse, compared to non-autistic people.
This talk is intended to help address this problem by helping people develop their understanding of autism, its link to eating disorders, and how treatment can be adapted to make it more accessible and effective for autistic patients. It will draw on recent research, aiming to provide:
- A brief update on autism, including on how the diagnosis has evolved to include more people without intellectual disability and more girls;
- An overview of evidence that there is a link between autism and restrictive eating disorders, with a focus on AN and ARFID in young people;
- Insights into some key reasons for the overlap between autism and eating disorders, covering mechanisms that can cause and maintain eating disorders in autistic young people;
- Ideas about how ED services can be adapted to make them more accessible and effective for autistic clients.
