Dr Gavin R. Stewart

Community Priorities for Preventing Suicide in Autistic People: An Approach to Guide Policy and Practice - Rachel L. Moseley, Tanya Procyshyn, Tanatswa Chikaura, Sarah J. Marsden, Tracey A. Parsons, S... Background: Suicide is a leading cause of death for autistic people worldwide, but there is remarkably little research addressing suicide prevention strategies ...

Community Priorities for Preventing Suicide in Autistic People: An Approach to Guide Policy and Practice by Moseley et. al. explores the ideas of autistic people and their supporters on necessary pathways to suicide prevention.

NEW FREE
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

It was great speaking with Miryam about autism and ageing while she prepared this article, and hopefully it will help raise wider awareness about the experiences and needs of middle-aged and older autistic folk.

This is a poster advertising the Autism Research (or ARCH) seminar series. This edition is taking place at 2PM GMT on the 25th of February 2026 on Zoom. The speaker is Alanna Shand (who uses she and her pronouns), a PhD student at King's College London. The talk is titled "exploring how autistic people leverage psychological strengths whilst compensating for difficulties", and the abstract reads "Our study examined compensation in autism (i.e., the use of strategies to appear neurotypical and manage autism-related differences). We developed two themes from interviewing autistic adults about their experiences; these themes captured, number 1, how strengths were used to compensate, and number 2, the duplicity of strengths and their impacts. These findings suggest that strengths may be leveraged to engage in compensation and highlight the variety of strengths endorsed by autistic people.".

It's ARCH time once again! 🥳

Join us on Wednesday the 25th for a talk by Alanna Shand (@alannajshand.bsky.social) about the psychological strengths autistic people use to compensate for difficulties.
Tickets are available @ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/arch-semin...

We hope to see you there!

Congratulations @agnewblais.bsky.social 🎉 Very well deserved, and much needed research!

I'm editing a Special Collection for Women's Health on autistic women and girls' health and wellbeing -
particularly interested in submissions from the Global South and with under-researched groups! journals.sagepub.com/topic/collec...

Autistic traits and suicidality in midlife and old age: investigating mediating effects of mental health and social connectedness - Nature Mental Health Nuzum et al. used cross-sectional data from the UK PROTECT study to evaluate the relationship between high autistic traits and suicidality in older adults.

Another new open-access paper (w/ Dr Elly Nuzum, Prof Josh Stott and Dr Amber John) has been published in Nature Mental Health!

Using data from PROTECT (n=9979, age 50+), we found that the relationship between #autistic traits and #suicidality was mediated by mental health and social problems.

ADHD Traits in Childhood and Physical Health in Midlife This cohort study investigates the association between childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits and physical health outcomes in midlife and the role health risk factors play in...

Our new open-access paper (with Prof Josh Stott and Dr Amber John) has been published in JAMA Network Open. Using data from the BCS-1970 cohort, we found that childhood #ADHD traits were associated with increased risk of poorer long-term health outcomes and behaviours in midlife.

This poster advertises a study looking for people who have a sibling with pathological or extreme demand avoidance. The text reads: "did you have a sibling growing up with pathological (or extreme) demand avoidance? We are looking for adult siblings of people with diagnosed or identified PDA/EDA to talk to us about your experiences! We would like to do an online interview for around 60-120 minutes, and you can get a £20 Love2Shop voucher for your time! We're looking for people who: are 18+, are living in the UK, lived with a sibling with diagnosed or identified PDA in their childhood. For more information and to take part, please get in contact with us at pda.siblings.study@kcl.ac.uk."

Are you the sibling of a person diagnosed with pathological or extreme demand avoidance? Or are you the parent of someone with pathological or extreme demand avoidance who has another child above the age of 18, who you think would be interested in taking part in research?
We have a study for you! 1/

The resource explains similarities, differences, changes to look out for, & where to find support.

The webpage and PDF versions link to a range of different information pages, making it a helpful signposting hub.

We're also working on other versions, including one for professionals.

Autism and dementia Dementia UK is a charity that provides Admiral Nurses for families affected by dementia. Call our Dementia Helpline to find out how we can support you.

Pleased to share a new community resource on #autism and #dementia that I co-produced with @dementiauk.bsky.social, @autistica.org.uk, and members of the autism and dementia community.

www.dementiauk.org/information-...

@kingsioppn.bsky.social

If you need help or support, please reach out to the Samaritans: www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-h...

There is a lot of excellent research going on related to suicidality and autism, and I am glad our ageing focused work adds to this and highlights the need for better mental health support for older autistic adults.

#AutRes

Older autistic adults (aged 65+) were more likely than middle aged autistic adults (age 40 to 64) to report lifetime and recent self harm or suicidal self harm. This is similar to the general population literature where older age is a risk factor for suicidal behaviours.

#AutRes

Within the autistic group, women and people assigned female at birth reported significantly higher rates of suicidal ideation and suicidal self harm than men and people assigned male at birth.

#AutRes

Here are some key findings:

Autistic adults aged 40 to 93 reported far higher rates of suicidal ideation, self harming thoughts, deliberate self harm, and suicidal self harm than a matched non autistic group.

#AutRes

Self-harm and suicidality experiences of autistic and non-autistic adults in midlife and old age - Molecular Autism Background Suicide has been reported as a leading cause of premature death in autistic populations. Additionally, risk of suicidality is often found to increase with age in the general population. Des...

My former King's College London MSc DEVPP student, Sophie Roper, has published her dissertation on autism, sucidality and ageing. Supervised by me, plus @proffrancescahappe.bsky.social & @goldage.bsky.social

The paper is open access in Molecular Autism: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#AutRes

Traumatic Experiences, Psychological Distress and Suicide‐Related Behaviors in Autistic Adults Autistic adults have increased risks of trauma, suicide, and poor mental health compared to non-autistic adults, with 1 in 4 autistic adults attempting suicide. We administered an anonymized, self-re...

My fantastic PhD student @tanachikaura.bsky.social has published her first first-author paper today on self-reported lifetime traumatic experiences, psychological distress, and risk of suicidality among autistic adults. As the paper provides details on these issues, please take care when reading

🚨 Funded PhD on ageing, social cognition & self/other differentiation! 🚨

🧠 Supervised by myself (University of St Andrews) & Prof. Louise Phillips (University of Aberdeen), the project includes EEG & eye-tracking training.

🌍 Open to UK + international students!

📅 Deadline: 15th Dec 2025

So I make the recommendation we label our samples accordingly! Midlife and old age. By doing so, we’ll improve the accuracy of our sample descriptions and help generate more information about these different life stages.

The open access version is here: kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/pu...

#AutRes

Autism & ageing research has advanced a lot over the past several years, and I’m very proud to be part of that movement forward. But, inadvertently, we have often described people over 50 as being ‘older adults’, which isn’t very accurate. It also doesn’t align with the labels used in other fields.

Distinguishing midlife and old age: A recommendation for autism researchers - Gavin R Stewart, 2025 Research on ageing in autism has sharply increased following a number of influential publications that highlighted the lack of knowledge in this area. However, ...

I’ve had a busy few weeks with life, travel & grant deadlines, but I’m really pleased that a letter I wrote has been published.

In it, I recommend that autism researchers talk about midlife and old age as separate life stages, not conflating the two.

doi.org/10.1177/1362...

#AutRes

Are you an autistic person aged 18+ from the Global Majority, who has received talking therapy for support around anxiety? We hope to include a diverse range of voices to inform our study, which involves a 75 minute online interview. To find out more, please follow this link: dub.sh/LzKn6is

Video can be accessed here: youtu.be/mfRWoIQTc-M?...

It has now been added to the playlist :)

I think the team are still cleaning the video up before they upload it, but it'll end up here soon: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

The talks are added to a YouTube playlist. If you go to the Eventbrite page linked above, there is a link to this playlist with all of the previous ARCH talks :)

This is a poster advertising the ARCH (or Autism Research) Seminar Series. This talk takes place on the 22nd of October, 2025, at 2pm on Zoom. The talk is being given by Nell Fahey, who uses she and her pronouns, and is an MSc graduate from King's College London. She is being introduced by Dr Gavin Stewart, who uses he and him pronouns, and is a senior research fellow at King's College London. The talk title is "Exploring the Social Experiences of Autistic Adults in Midlife and Old Age: a co-produced qualitative study". The abstract reads "Being connected to other people and having good access to social support are often linked to a better quality of life as we get older. However, autistic people often experience barriers to being socially connected. Our co-produced study set out to explore the social experiences of middle-aged and older autistic adults, with a particular focus on the types of social connections they would like as they age. We interviewed 33 autistic people in midlife and old age and conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of their responses. Our findings highlighted the varying impact that ageing can have on people’s social experiences and suggest that social motivations and barriers to social interaction may differ for autistic adults in midlife compared with those in old age. In this talk, we will describe our co-production process and highlight these key findings and what they mean for autistic people."

📣The ARCH seminar is back!
Join us on October 22nd to hear from Nell Fahey (with introduction from Dr Gavin Stewart) about their work on the social experiences of middle-aged and older autistic adults.
More info on our mailout - sign up and get tickets @ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/arch-semin...

Co-occurring functional neurological disorder and autism: an exploratory study of comorbidities in a retrospective cohort study using TriNetX - Journal of Neurology Background Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) encompasses motor, cognitive, and sensory symptoms resulting from disruptions in brain-body communication. Emerging research suggests a higher-than-expected occurrence of autism in FND, potentially due to shared cognitive mechanisms and overlapping comorbidities. However, large-scale characterisation of this dual-diagnosis is lacking. Methods Using de-identified health records from the TriNetX research network, we identified children and adults with both FND and autism (‘FND + Autism’), comparing them to individuals with FND only (‘FND-only’) and autism only (‘Autism-only’). We examined psychiatric comorbidities (e.g. mood, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders, obsessive–compulsive disorder), intellectual disability and ADHD. Results Of 220,312 individuals with an FND diagnosis, and 674,971 individuals with an autism diagnosis, 5,152 (2.3% of FND, 0.76% of autism) had both FND and autism. The rates of autism were therefore 6 times higher in FND compared to the base rates of the TriNetX population. Most were diagnosed with autism before FND, with over one-third diagnosed in childhood. Functional seizures were the most common FND subtype, and were more frequent in FND + Autism than FND-only (adults: 52% vs. 44%; children: 47% vs. 42%). Comorbidity across all psychiatric conditions was significantly higher in FND + Autism compared to both comparison groups. ADHD was particularly elevated in FND + Autism (adults: 50% vs. 13% FND-only, 36% Autism-only; children: 64% vs. 21% FND-only, 41% Autism-only). Conclusions This study presents the largest dataset to date characterising individuals with co-occurring FND and autism. Findings are consistent with previous findings of higher rates of autism in people with FND and reveal a potentially distinct clinical profile, marked by elevated rates of ADHD and psychiatric comorbidities, and increased occurrence of functional seizures compared to FND- or Autism-only groups. Recognising this overlap may improve diagnosis, clinical care, and understanding of mechanisms underlying the co-occurrence of FND and autism.

Excited to share my first first-author paper in Journal of Neurology! 🧠

Using the TriNetX dataset (176M patients), we explored co-occurring FND and Autism - work first presented at the RCPsych Neuropsychiatry Conf

Read it here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#Autism #FND #Neuropsychiatry

On the @annualreviews.bsky.social website, there is a new review on autism and aging. It covers areas including underdiagnosis for #ActuallyAutistic adults aged 40 and over.

The review is available at www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Loneliness in young adulthood: a 12-year follow up in an epidemiological, genetically-sensitive cohort study at University of Greenwich on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Loneliness in young adulthood: a 12-year follow up in an epidemiological, genetically-sensitive cohort study at University of Greenwich, listed on FindAPhD.com

New funded PhD at the University of Greenwich 📚

Study loneliness from age 18–30 using twin data from the E-Risk Study.

Join a world-class team in London & explore how early adulthood shapes mental health.

Open to global applicants 🌍
🔗 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
#PsychScience #fundedPhD