Mental Health and Autism Symptom Severity of Autistic Youth who Received Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention

Autism involves social communication difficulties and engagement in restricted and repetitive behaviours and interests. Many autistic youth experience co-occurring mental health conditions. Unfortunately, treatment history is rarely reported in this sample, resulting in ambiguity in the relationship between treatment history and later mental health functioning. Limited research has explored the long-term mental health and education outcomes of Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention (EIBI). The purpose of this study was to describe the mental health, autism symptom severity, medication use, and education outcomes of youth who previously received EIBI. Thirty-two parents completed questionnaires about their child’s mental health (i.e., Child Behavior Checklist), autism symptom severity (i.e., Social Responsiveness Scale), education outcomes, and medication use. Scores of mental health measures were higher than the normative sample but lower than scores from other studies of autistic participants. Though uncontrolled, this suggests that autistic youth who received EIBI do not show severe mental health difficulties.