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Emotion dysregulation is heightened in autistic females: A comparison with autistic males and borderline personality disorder

BACKGROUND: Emotion dysregulation is increasingly recognized as highly prevalent and impairing in autistic individuals. Yet, a large majority of studies have considered emotion dysregulation in youth only, and most of them did not consider sex differences in emotion dysregulation manifestation. OBJE...

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Autores principales: Weiner, Luisa, Costache, Madalina Elena, Bemmouna, Doha, Rabot, Juliette, Weibel, Sébastien, Dubreucq, Marine, Dubreucq, Julien, Coutelle, Romain
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10214106/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37218688
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/17455057231174763
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author Weiner, Luisa
Costache, Madalina Elena
Bemmouna, Doha
Rabot, Juliette
Weibel, Sébastien
Dubreucq, Marine
Dubreucq, Julien
Coutelle, Romain
author_facet Weiner, Luisa
Costache, Madalina Elena
Bemmouna, Doha
Rabot, Juliette
Weibel, Sébastien
Dubreucq, Marine
Dubreucq, Julien
Coutelle, Romain
author_sort Weiner, Luisa
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Emotion dysregulation is increasingly recognized as highly prevalent and impairing in autistic individuals. Yet, a large majority of studies have considered emotion dysregulation in youth only, and most of them did not consider sex differences in emotion dysregulation manifestation. OBJECTIVES: In the present study, we aim to investigate sex differences relative to emotion dysregulation in autistic adults without intellectual disability as well as its relationship with different factors potentially involved in emotion dysregulation (e.g. camouflaging, alexithymia, suicidality, quality of life). Self-reported emotion dysregulation will be assessed in autistic adults but also in females with borderline personality disorder, given that emotion dysregulation is particularly enhanced in this population. DESIGN: Cross-sectional, prospective, controlled. METHODS: Twenty-eight autistic females, 22 autistic males and 24 females with borderline personality disorder were recruited from a dialectical behavior therapy program waiting list. They completed several self-report questionnaires measuring emotion dysregulation, alexithymia, suicidality, quality of life, camouflaging borderline symptoms and autism severity. RESULTS: Most emotion dysregulation subscale scores and alexithymia scores were heightened in autistic females compared to females with borderline personality disorder and, to a lesser extent, compared to autistic males. Independently of borderline personality disorder symptoms, emotion dysregulation was related to alexithymia and poorer psychological health in autistic females, whereas it was mostly related to autism severity, poorer physical health and living conditions in autistic males. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that emotion dysregulation is a major difficulty of autistic adults without intellectual disability eligible for dialectical behavior therapy, and this is especially the case for autistic females. There seem to be different sex-specific factors involved in emotion dysregulation found in autistic adults, which highlight the need to target-specific domains (e.g. alexithymia) in the treatment of emotion dysregulation in autistic females. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04737707 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04737707
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spelling pubmed-102141062023-05-27 Emotion dysregulation is heightened in autistic females: A comparison with autistic males and borderline personality disorder Weiner, Luisa Costache, Madalina Elena Bemmouna, Doha Rabot, Juliette Weibel, Sébastien Dubreucq, Marine Dubreucq, Julien Coutelle, Romain Womens Health (Lond) The Health of Autistic Women: State of the Field and Future Directions BACKGROUND: Emotion dysregulation is increasingly recognized as highly prevalent and impairing in autistic individuals. Yet, a large majority of studies have considered emotion dysregulation in youth only, and most of them did not consider sex differences in emotion dysregulation manifestation. OBJECTIVES: In the present study, we aim to investigate sex differences relative to emotion dysregulation in autistic adults without intellectual disability as well as its relationship with different factors potentially involved in emotion dysregulation (e.g. camouflaging, alexithymia, suicidality, quality of life). Self-reported emotion dysregulation will be assessed in autistic adults but also in females with borderline personality disorder, given that emotion dysregulation is particularly enhanced in this population. DESIGN: Cross-sectional, prospective, controlled. METHODS: Twenty-eight autistic females, 22 autistic males and 24 females with borderline personality disorder were recruited from a dialectical behavior therapy program waiting list. They completed several self-report questionnaires measuring emotion dysregulation, alexithymia, suicidality, quality of life, camouflaging borderline symptoms and autism severity. RESULTS: Most emotion dysregulation subscale scores and alexithymia scores were heightened in autistic females compared to females with borderline personality disorder and, to a lesser extent, compared to autistic males. Independently of borderline personality disorder symptoms, emotion dysregulation was related to alexithymia and poorer psychological health in autistic females, whereas it was mostly related to autism severity, poorer physical health and living conditions in autistic males. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that emotion dysregulation is a major difficulty of autistic adults without intellectual disability eligible for dialectical behavior therapy, and this is especially the case for autistic females. There seem to be different sex-specific factors involved in emotion dysregulation found in autistic adults, which highlight the need to target-specific domains (e.g. alexithymia) in the treatment of emotion dysregulation in autistic females. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04737707 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04737707 SAGE Publications 2023-05-23 /pmc/articles/PMC10214106/ /pubmed/37218688 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/17455057231174763 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle The Health of Autistic Women: State of the Field and Future Directions
Weiner, Luisa
Costache, Madalina Elena
Bemmouna, Doha
Rabot, Juliette
Weibel, Sébastien
Dubreucq, Marine
Dubreucq, Julien
Coutelle, Romain
Emotion dysregulation is heightened in autistic females: A comparison with autistic males and borderline personality disorder
title Emotion dysregulation is heightened in autistic females: A comparison with autistic males and borderline personality disorder
title_full Emotion dysregulation is heightened in autistic females: A comparison with autistic males and borderline personality disorder
title_fullStr Emotion dysregulation is heightened in autistic females: A comparison with autistic males and borderline personality disorder
title_full_unstemmed Emotion dysregulation is heightened in autistic females: A comparison with autistic males and borderline personality disorder
title_short Emotion dysregulation is heightened in autistic females: A comparison with autistic males and borderline personality disorder
title_sort emotion dysregulation is heightened in autistic females: a comparison with autistic males and borderline personality disorder
topic The Health of Autistic Women: State of the Field and Future Directions
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10214106/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37218688
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/17455057231174763
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