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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

EV0189

The intersection of gender and culture in the clinical presentation of autism: a systematic review

THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER AND CULTURE ON THE CLINICAL PRESENTATION OF AUTISM: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Culturally shaped camouflaging behavior emerges as the primary pathway leading to missed or delayed diagnoses in autistic girls.

The review aimed to systematically examine how culture shapes the presentation of autism in girls. Following PRISMA guidelines, PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and PMC were searched for the period from January 2010 to March 2026; searches combined concepts relating to autism, sex or gender, and cultural factors, and all records were independently screened by two researchers. Culturally diverse samples of individuals under 18 years of age with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and reported sex information were included. Of the 1,659 records identified, 63 duplicates were removed, 1,596 records were screened, 1,399 were excluded, 197 full texts were assessed, and 191 were excluded, leaving 6 studies for inclusion in the review. Across the six studies, camouflaging behavior was identified as the main pathway through which culture shapes the recognition and presentation of autism; patterns reflected clinician awareness, healthcare resources, gender norms, and racialized interpretations. Study-level findings included camouflaging rates of 23.9% in high-income countries and 0% in middle-income countries in a mixed-methods sample from 31 countries (n=99); later diagnosis among girls in the Saudi cohort of a cross-sectional study conducted in Egypt and Saudi Arabia (n=48); coping through peer imitation and internalizing in a UK qualitative study (n=14); intergenerational teaching of masking in a US Latino sample (n=21); distress being misinterpreted through racial stereotypes in a UK interpretative phenomenological analysis study (n=4); and a two-factor camouflaging profile and higher assimilation in a Taiwanese psychometric study (n=205). The authors note that culturally sensitive assessment may reduce missed or delayed diagnoses and that diagnostic tools developed in Western settings may fail to capture these presentations.

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