Low Battery Alarm; A Scoping Review of Autistic Burnout

Autistic people have long talked about autistic burnout in social media yet there is limited data available in the academic literature, and its definition is still under debate. This scoping review aims to explore the key concepts related to autistic burnout and identify gaps in the current knowledge of this condition. We conducted a comprehensive search across PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Web of Science, and PsycINFO databases to gather data on autistic burnout. The extracted data from 14 included studies fell into six themes, namely Subjective Understanding of Burnout (four subthemes), Burnout Characterization (three subthemes), Evaluation, Co-occurrence and Misidentification, Biological Mechanisms, and Solutions. The Subjective Understanding of Burnout represents the internal point of view (POV) on autistic burnout (experiences and feelings of people who have personally encountered burnout), while the rest fall into the category of external POV (observations or assessments from outside people or experts who observed autistic burnout in affected individuals). Despite the growing literature on autistic burnout, our study reveals several gaps in current knowledge, such as its epidemiology, protective and risk factors, consequences, and educational plans and guidelines to improve awareness and support. Separating findings by the internal and external POVs makes up one of the strengths of this study.