Understanding and measuring psychological distress in Autistic students.

据报道，自闭症个体的大学毕业率低于他们的非自闭症同龄人（Cage等人，2020年）。其他研究表明，自闭症学生自我报告有显著的心理健康困难（McLeod等人，2021年），并在大学面临挑战（斯科特和塞奇威克，2021年）。了解自闭症学生的生活经历和心理困扰可以促进发展社会参与和提高生活质量的机会（货车Heijist & Geurts，2015）。大学咨询服务（UCS）有效地改善了学生的抑郁、焦虑和学业困扰经历（Broglia等人，2021年）。然而，自闭症患者可能很难获得专业的心理健康支持，并且据报道，与非自闭症患者相比，他们对常用的心理治疗干预措施的反应不同（Scott & Sedgewick，2021）。因此，这个博士项目的总体目标将是研究自闭症学生的生活心理健康经验，并制定一个可靠的措施，可以准确地评估自闭症学生的心理困扰，用于UCSs。因此，该措施的主要预期用户是在UCS内工作的临床医生和从业人员。

Autistic individuals are reported to have lower university completion rates than their non-autistic peers (Cage et al., 2020). Other research demonstrates that autistic students self-report significant mental health difficulties (McLeod, et al., 2021) and face challenges at university (Scott & Sedgewick, 2021). Understanding the life experiences and psychological distress experienced by autistic students can facilitate opportunities to develop both societal engagement and improve their quality of life (Van Heijist & Geurts, 2015). University counselling services (UCSs) effectively improve student experiences of depression, anxiety, and academic distress (Broglia et al., 2021). However, autistic people are likely to struggle to access professional mental health support, and have been reported to respond differently than non-autistic people to commonly used psychotherapeutic interventions (Scott & Sedgewick, 2021). Thus, the overarching objective of this PhD project would be to research the lived mental health experiences of autistic students and develop a reliable measure that can accurately assess autistic students' psychological distress for use within UCSs. The primary intended user of this measure would therefore be clinicians and practitioners working within UCSs.