Improving Understanding of Autism and Personality Disorder
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Improving recognition, understanding and differentiation of autism and personality disorder: A mixed-methods lived experience study
IRAS ID
307912
Contact name
Kirsten Barnicot
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
City, University of London
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 6 months, 0 days
Research summary
Why are we doing this research? People with lived experience and clinicians say that autism may be missed or misdiagnosed in some people diagnosed with personality disorder – particularly in people identifying as female - and this can cause serious harm through people being misunderstood, feeling unheard, and being offered inappropriate and inadequate support.
What will we do? We will first conduct in-depth interviews and assessments with women meeting diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder and autistic women, (female gender identity and or identified female at birth) to explore their perspectives on: (1) Similarities and differences in lived emotional, behavioural, cognitive, identity and interpersonal experiences; (2) Limitations of current assessment tools in evaluating and distinguishing autistic traits in women diagnosed with a personality disorder; and 3) Facilitators and barriers to seeking and gaining a diagnosis of autism. We will use our findings to generate hypotheses about the best ways to assess and differentiate autism and personality disorder, and will test these in a third study.
How will we help improve care? We will generate a set of key dos and don’ts that clinicians can use when considering autism as an alternative or additional explanation for the experiences of a person currently diagnosed with a personality disorder. We will identify a set of distinguishing features that clinicians can use to differentiate autism from personality disorder in women, as well as identifying shared features that are not useful for making this distinction. We hope our findings will help clinicians better recognise, understand and support people diagnosed with a personality disorder who may be autistic, and support people experiencing personality disorder and/or autism to better understand and communicate their experiences.REC name
West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/WM/0287
Date of REC Opinion
14 Jan 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion