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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.

Autism spectrum disorder and comorbidity in an adult outpatient clinical sample

Asd and comorbidy in an adult outpatient clinical sample

An autism diagnosis is confirmed in approximately half of adults referred for assessment; the sample shows a high psychiatric symptom burden and frequent neurodevelopmental comorbidity, while commonly used screening scales have limited discriminative value in this group.

Referrals for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) assessment in adulthood have increased markedly over the past decade, reflecting growing awareness of the lifelong course of autism and changing diagnostic practices; however, these adults often present with complex neurodevelopmental and psychiatric profiles, creating challenges for differential diagnosis and clinical decision-making. This presentation reports data from a recent clinical cohort of approximately 750 adults referred for comprehensive ASD assessment between 2018 and 2025 at a specialized autism outpatient clinic in Germany. Assessments included standardized diagnostic instruments (ADOS-2, ADI-R, SCID-CV), an evaluation of psychiatric comorbidity, measures of depression, anxiety, overall symptom severity, and subjective well-being, and sociodemographic characteristics. An ASD diagnosis was confirmed in approximately half of the adults referred. The cohort showed a high psychiatric symptom burden and frequent neurodevelopmental and psychiatric comorbidity, with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder among the most common co-occurring or alternative diagnoses. Preliminary findings suggest that commonly used ASD screening scales have limited discriminative value in this selected referral population. Contemporary adult ASD assessment increasingly extends beyond establishing or ruling out an autism diagnosis to evaluating overlapping neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, highlighting the need for comprehensive assessment.

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