Characterizing Mental Health Symptoms and Caregiver Priorities for Autistic Children Receiving Publicly-Funded Mental...

Autistic children often receive publicly-funded mental health services to address co-occurring mental health concerns. Increasing research has sought to characterize the mental health profiles of autistic children accessing these services, but there remains a need to integrate caregiver priorities into these profiles.

This study seeks to characterize autistic children's mental health profiles by integrating caregiver priorities and child mental health symptom severity.

Data from caregivers of 186 school-age autistic children were drawn from baseline assessments conducted in a hybrid type 3 implementation-effectiveness trial testing implementation strategies for An Individualized Mental Health Intervention for Autism in outpatient and school-based mental health services. The Top Problems Assessment was employed to assess caregiver-identified emotional and behavioral intervention priorities, and the Brief Problem Checklist was used to assess the severity of children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms. An exploratory Latent Class Analysis classified children by caregiver priorities and child mental health symptom severity. Child and family characteristics associated with class membership were examined.

A four-class solution emerged: (1) Primarily Externalizing Priority, (2) Mixed Priority, Lower Severity, (3) Mixed Priority, Higher Severity, and (4) Primarily Internalizing Priority. Child gender and caregiver primary language were associated with class membership.

Findings highlight the heterogeneity of autistic children's presenting problems and the value of integrating caregiver priorities into child profiles. Results may guide evidence-based intervention selection, implementation planning, and capacity building related to serving autistic children in mental health services.