The (a)typical burden of COVID-19 pandemic scenario in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Psychological and mental health consequences of large-scale anti-contagion policies are assuming strong relevance in the COVID-19 pandemic. We proposed a specific focus on a large sample of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), developing an ad hoc instrument to investigate changes occurred in specific (sub-)domains during a period of national lockdown (Italy). Our questionnaire, named AutiStress, is both context-specific (being set in the COVID-19 pandemic scenario) and condition-specific (being structured taking into account the autistic functioning peculiarities in the paediatric age). An age- and gender-matched group of neurotypical (TD) controls was also provided. As expected, the severe lockdown policies had a general negative impact both on ASD and TD children, reflecting the obvious burden of the pandemic situation. However, our findings also indicate that children with ASD experienced more positive changes than TD ones. Noteworthy, we report a thought-provoking double dissociation in the context-specific predictor (i.e., accessibility to private outdoor spaces), indicating that it impacts differently on the two groups. Focusing on the ASD group, results suggest a condition-specific impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on core autistic (sub-)domains. Taken together, our data call for a multi-layered, context- and condition-specific analysis of the pandemic burden beyond any oversimplification.