Our autism reading group this month focused on the topic of gender diversity and autism. The current literature suggests that people who don’t identify with the gender assigned at birth are 3-6 times more likely to be autistic. Our discussion was really interesting and focused around 4 main areas: How can education surrounding gender identity […]

This month we had another great autism reading group; this time turning to the fascinating topic of belonging. For advance preparation we had two articles about the autistic community and peer support and an inspirational TED talk about the power of friendship. Peer support   We started by talking about the benefits of peer-to-peer support

In this month’s reading group, we focused on the ‘Double Empathy Problem’. We were joined by a range of people with a diverse range of experiences and backgrounds. We provided some interesting readings for people to take a look at beforehand: Double empathy, explained | Spectrum News  Revealing the Double Empathy Problem We started with

This month we turned to the topic of autism and employment, after hearing a great podcast from Sophie Longley, who also came along to support our discussion. Our readings were:   What’s it really like to be autistic in the workplace? Autism: Workplaces ‘need to be more supportive’ A great podcast by Sophie Longley This time

In this month’s reading group we had a really interesting discussion about the effectiveness of CBT for autistic people and how we evaluate therapies. We provided an interesting reading and some discussion questions: Why are there such variations in ratings of the effectiveness of therapies? How can we adapt the way we evaluate the effectiveness

In this month’s reading group, we had a great discussion about the support for students in schools and the latest National Autistic Society 2021 School Report. The report gives recommendations of how schools might provide better support for autistic students.  We provided some advance discussion questions to think about:  Do you agree with these recommendations, and do you foresee any problems

This month’s reading group was focused on the relationship between interoception and autism. We provided a reading about how being more in connection to your body can lead to lower levels of anxiety, including for those with autism, and a video providing an overview of interoception. This reading group followed a fascinating lab meeting at

The topic for the first Autism Reading Group of the year was Autism in girls and the diagnosis gap. For this meeting, we had a TED talk Niamh McCann: girls with Asperger’s and a reading. Autism has historically been viewed mainly as a male condition. The ratio of boys diagnosed compared to girls is 4:1, but research has found the true ratio