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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.

Living with autism: interviews with autistic adults receiving outpatient care

Living with asd - interviews from adults with asd in outpatient care

For autistic adults, access to psychotherapy involves not merely a series of discrete barriers but an ongoing process of negotiation between the individual and the healthcare system.

The study aimed to examine how factors that hinder access to psychotherapy interact within psychiatric care, despite the high prevalence of co-occurring psychiatric disorders among autistic adults. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 autistic adults recruited from a specialized outpatient psychiatric clinic in Sweden, and the data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Access to psychotherapy was experienced as a nonlinear, dynamic process shaped by interactions among structural conditions, clinical practices, and communication dynamics. Five themes were identified: fragmented care pathways, gatekeeping as a turning point in access, negotiating the visibility of autism in clinical encounters, mismatch and adaptation in psychotherapy, and the psychological consequences of navigating care. Participants described repeated efforts to obtain support, difficulties navigating referral systems, and challenges communicating their needs within standard clinical procedures. In contrast, they reported that relatively simple adaptations, such as structured communication, written support, concrete language, and flexibility in therapeutic practice, facilitated engagement and improved their treatment experience. The findings were integrated into a process-oriented model identifying key intervention points for psychiatric services.

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