The Psychological Impact of COVID-19 among a Sample of Italian Adults with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Follow-Up Study

Abstract

The strict lockdowns imposed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic brought an increase in levels of stress, anxiety, and depression in the general population. However, in a previous study, our group found that individuals with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HF-ASD) reported an increase in their psychological wellbeing and a decrease in their daily tiredness, in relation to the social distancing measures imposed during the first Italian lockdown (between March and May 2020). In this follow-up study, conducted during the “second wave” of COVID-19, we included the same group of individuals with HF-ASD and evaluated their levels of stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD-related symptoms, tiredness, and perceived wellbeing; moreover, we compared our results to the ones we obtained during the first lockdown on the same population. We found that individuals with HF-ASD experienced higher levels of the aforementioned psychiatric symptoms during the second lockdown, with respect to the first one. These levels positively correlated with their scores at the Autism Quotient subscale Attention Switching: hence, we speculated that these symptoms might be due not only to the prolonging of the social distancing measures, but also to the uncertainty that HF-ASD participants started experiencing at the end of the first lockdown.