Friendships and Mental Health in Autistic and Non-Autistic Adolescents

Abstract

Friends rise in importance during adolescence (Siegal et al., 2009). Additionally, friends have an impact on internalizing symptoms as adolescents begin to seek approval from friends. High quality friendships are characterized by a variety of factors such as help, security, closeness, companionship, and low conflict (Bukowski et al., 1994). The limitations of current research entails a lack of observation of the quantity of reciprocated friendships alongside marked friendship quality, compared to self-reported internalizing symptoms in autistic and non-autistic youth; thus fueling our research’s objective. The present study investigated 1) group differences in friendship quality, friendship security, and internalizing symptoms. Additionally, we investigated 2) whether reciprocated friendships or friendship quality were associated with internalizing symptoms in autistic and non-autistic adolescents. . Participants were 84 adolescents (64 autistic, 20 non-autistic) aged 11-14 (M = 12.87, SD = 1.79). Friendship security and help were significantly lower in autistic adolescents compared to non-autistic adolescents. However, group accounted for the largest variance in internalizing symptoms. Significant results were not found for our second aim. These outcomes seem to emphasize that non-autistic adolescents may tend to have a higher sense of security and help in their friendships compared to their autistic peers, emphasizing the need for supporting a sense of security and help in autistic youth and their friendships.

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