Founded in 2004, Autistica is the UK’s national autism research charity. Our mission is to transform the lives of autistic people and their families through ground-breaking, community-led research.
700,000 people in the UK are autistic, including 200,000 children. Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition which changes the way people communicate and experience the world around them. Mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression affect 79% of autistic people and in 2016 over 1,000 members of the autism community identified mental health as their top priority for research.
We are incredibly grateful to The Pixel Fund for supporting our project, ‘Reducing anxiety in children who cannot ask for help’, with a grant of £5,000. Anxiety can impact all areas of a child’s life, but what if you couldn’t let anyone know what was wrong and how they could help you? Autistic children with intellectual disabilities often speak few or no words, and their parents have no idea how to help them cope with change, uncertain situations or other anxiety-triggering events.
The Pixel Fund’s grant will help us to develop and test a new parent-led therapy – the first of its kind for this group. If successful, it will lead to a reduction in anxiety, improvements in child-parent relationships and a therapy which can be rolled out to children across the UK. This study is based at Aston University and will be led by one of Autistica’s first Future Leaders: innovative researchers at the start of their careers.