心理优势和幸福感：优势利用可预测自闭症患者的生活质量、幸福感和心理健康

Emily C Taylor , Lucy A Livingston, Rachel A Clutterbuck, Mitchell J Callan and Punit Shah

Strengths-based approaches to autism are increasing in research and clinical practice. Such approaches suggest facilitating autistic people to increase the use of their strengths leads to positive outcomes (e.g. improved well-being). However, despite proliferation of strengths-based clinical and educational interventions, these approaches are grounded on several assumptions that remain uninvestigated. Little is known about the specific strengths of autistic people, nor their current knowledge and use of their strengths. Critically, no research has directly tested if autistic people’s strengths knowledge and use is in fact associated with positive outcomes. Conducting an exploratory study, including the first well-powered comparisons of the self-reported strengths, strengths knowledge, and strengths use of matched autistic and non-autistic samples (N=276), we found that autistic and non-autistic participants reported similar strengths. While autistic people reported lower strengths knowledge and use, strengths use in autism strongly predicted better quality of life, subjective well-being, and lower levels of anxiety, depression, and stress. Thus, strength-based approaches and clinical interventions designed to increase strengths use may pose a valuable method for boosting well-being in autism. However, we suggest such approaches should focus on individuals’ strengths more generally, rather than perceived autism-specific abilities.

基于优势的自闭症治疗方法在研究和临床实践中越来越多。这种方法建议促进自闭症患者更多地利用他们的优势，从而带来积极的结果（例如改善幸福感）。然而，尽管基于优势的临床和教育干预措施激增，但这些方法都是基于几个尚未得到研究的假设。关于自闭症患者的具体优势，以及他们目前的知识和优势使用情况，我们知之甚少。至关重要的是，没有研究直接测试自闭症患者的优势知识和使用是否确实与积极的结果相关。进行探索性研究，包括首次对自报优势、优势知识和优势使用进行匹配的自闭症和非自闭症样本（N=276）的有效比较，我们发现自闭症和非自闭症参与者报告了相似的优势。虽然自闭症患者报告的优势知识和使用较低，但自闭症的优势使用强烈预示着更好的生活质量、主观幸福感和较低的焦虑、抑郁和压力水平。因此，旨在增加优势使用的基于优势的方法和临床干预可能是提高自闭症患者幸福感的有价值的方法。然而，我们建议这些方法应该更广泛地关注个人的优势，而不是感知到的自闭症特异性能力。