How People with Autism Access Mental Health Services Specifically Suicide Hotlines and Crisis Support Services, and Current Approaches to Mental Health Care: A Scoping Review

Abstract

For people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the risk of mental illness, including suicidality, has a higher prevalence than the general population. This scoping review explored how people with ASD access suicide hotlines/crisis support services; and current approaches to delivering mental health services (MHS) to people with ASD. A search identified 28 studies meeting the selection criteria with analysis revealing four key findings. The support received by the person with ASD influenced how they accessed MHS; people often encounter barriers to accessing MHS; a separation exists between autism and MHS; and no studies on accessing or delivering MHS through crisis hotlines. The presence of such autism-specific crisis hotlines and the dearth of studies suggest a void in the existing research.

Disclosure statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author contributions

• Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data; drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.

Conceptualisation: MC, SW. Funding acquisition: MC, RK. Data extraction, MC, RK, SW, GH. Data analysis and interpretation: SW, MC, GEH. Data checking: MC, RK, SW, GEH. Draft writing: SW, MC, RK, LM, GEH, CH. Review of final draft: All authors.

Correction statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by a donation from Gullewa Limited.