Background

Facts and figures

Around 2% of students are autistic, and the group is growing as more young people with a diagnosis enter higher education. However, because of the history of conflating autism with learning disability, many universities have only recently recognised that they have autistic students and many systems do not support autistic students well. This means that many students:

• Face discrimination and stigma from staff and students
• Struggle to access the support that is available for them
• Find support options difficult to navigate or not useful for their specific needs

Challenges

Autistic students are also more likely than their non-autistic peers to experience mental health challenges while at university. Members of the team for this project followed autistic students over an academic year, finding that:

• They had high levels of anxiety and depression
• These did not change with the patterns of the academic year
• They did have a major impact on their ability to engage with their course
• Poor support and stigma from staff had a significant impact on mental health

These challenges exist regardless of the fact that autistic students are often highly academically capable and enjoy their courses. This leads autistic students to be more likely to leave university before completing their studies or graduating, which has long term impacts on their employability and future wellbeing.

Aims

This project therefore aimed to develop, trial, and evaluate training for university staff, teaching them about autism, autistic students, and autistic mental health. The long-term goal was for trained staff to be able to offer better and more useful support to autistic students, so that students were more able to stay on their courses and to have better mental health and wellbeing while at university.