Short report: A co-designed psychoeducation for older autistic adults-a multiple case study

After receiving an autism diagnosis by a clinician, psychoeducation (i.e. information regarding autism) is often offered. However, older autistic adults (55+ years) may need specific information about the challenges they face in daily life as they are in a specific life phase. A psychoeducation program for this specific age group does not exist yet. We first developed such a program together with autistic adults and clinicians working with autistic people, after which we tested the program with nine autistic adults (56-73 years) and someone close to them (so-called proxy). Before testing the program, we determined together with autistic older adults what they thought should be the outcome of this intervention in order to state whether it was, indeed, a useful intervention. Earlier studies found that autistic people often think differently about their own autistic characteristics than their proxy. A reduction of this difference could increase mutual understanding. Therefore, the main hypothesis was that the program would decrease this difference with respect to autistic characteristics and cognitive challenges (e.g. memory problems). Another hypothesis was that the program would have a positive impact on a series of other factors, such as self-esteem. The results showed that the program did neither decrease the difference in insight nor the other tested factors. Nonetheless, we believe it is important to keep on working on a psychoeducation program for older autistic adults, because participants informed us the program had still helped them in certain ways and they gave helpful feedback for improvements of the program.