It’s been more than a year that we are all affected by this pandemic that starts in Wuhan at the end of the 2010s, and it affects virtually everyone globally, including people with autism. This pandemic makes people in this spectrum to have increased behavioral problems, which leads to increased risk of more intense & frequent behavioral problems due to disrupted services & therapies they normally have.
9 out of 10 people with ASD are worried about their mental health during lockdown, in which they are more impacted with negative mental health from this pandemic compared to their neurotypical counterparts. Since people within this spectrum have difficulties dealing with changes in routine & transitions, they’re more stressed compared to neurotypicals. Coronavirus (aka COVID-19) affects their routines & social life for someone with autism, which is difficult for them to deal with since it maintains their mental health & makes them feel safe.
To deal with this, alternative routines should be made, support them in their social network, and engage them in social contact within ASD community, which reduce the damage done from the pandemic. People with autism, which is already lonelier & face more social isolation, missed social contact, and it’s even more pronounced since the advent of Coronavirus.
This pandemic also increased the level of anxiety due to their insistence of sameness, inflexible adherence to routines & ritualized patterns of behavior, since coping with complex changes and unpredictability is challenging for them already. People with this disorder are more vulnerable due to their communication, socialization, & executive functioning differences, anxiety disorder & their intellectual disability.
They also have difficulties in receptive communication skills & delays in processing information, which impacted their ability to respond to pandemic effectively & efficiently, as well as having challenges in expressive communication such as difficulties communicating pain, symptoms of illness or emotional distress, which increased the reliance on his/her families, caregivers & other staff at communicating important information related to the pandemic or observing symptoms of potential illness.
In addition, they also have difficulties with core components of resilience, such as making future predictions, foreshadow multiple outcomes to a given situation, adapt & being flexible to abrupt changes.
The most impacted negative effects caused by Coronavirus are uncertainty of what will happen next, as well as changes in routine. Disrupted activities & routines they do normally annoy them heavily, and challenging to deal with.
In addition, people within this spectrum have difficulties with work-life balance while working from home, balance work with childcare, difficulties dealing with social distancing in which someone that defy rules may trigger anxiety & frustration, difficulties dealing with anxiety of another routine change after lifting of lockdown & other pandemic-related measures, difficulties dealing with anxiety of sudden return to external stimuli (smell, lights, sounds, etc.) and the loss of coping skills to deal with them, loss of social skills during this pandemic that makes attending social events, returning to work/school environments with new social norms stressful.
In addition, all the service providers (schools, therapies, etc) are cut since the start of lockdowns & quarantines, which impacted their educational & vocational activities, availability of unstructured leisure time opportunities, as well as their access to health services. Also, returning to normal conditions such as reopening of schools, offices, & other social locations pose a challenge for people within this spectrum because social environments cause anxiety, and some need gradual approaches to reintroduce school, work & other social locations in which the skills lost because of Coronavirus pandemic must be retrained, along with its required health protocols such as occupant limits or mask requirements.
Also, limits on school, work & access to community from restrictions of nonessential activities also lead to increased unstructured/free time at home, which is hard to deal with for people with autism as they struggle with executive functioning such as planning, organization, task initiation & self-monitoring.
Since they have restricted/fixed interests, they can become stuck in his/her interests in excess free time & limited scheduled variability, which interferes with skill development & adaptations to cope with changing conditions & makes it difficult to reallocate time & other important interests & activities when schedules go back to normal. The requirement of wearing masks in public like we’ve seen nowadays also affect the ability to see & understand each other’s facial expression & as well as communicating with each other.
This pandemic also increased irritability, social withdrawal, stereotypical behavior, hyperactivity & inappropriate speech for someone with autism, as well as increased self-injury, reduced sleep quality, sleep disturbance & problems with sleep duration. The parents of people in this spectrum also have additional load to bear, in addition to coping with working from home, caring for other household members, keep meals & household chores, in which completing schoolwork & interacting with teachers through video with parents around them & surrounded by temptations of highly preferred activities are challenging & unfamiliar for them.
However, there are still positive effects gained from the Coronavirus pandemic for people in this spectrum. People with autism have a feeling of social solidarity in which they feel the same struggles as everyone else & got used to isolating themselves to reduce sensory & social overload, reduced sensory & social overload that they normally deal with from parties, appointments, etc., which improved their living conditions, more time for themselves & with their families, able to control their daily routines, & able to control their daily routines. Some people with this disorder also prefer to be alone & don’t want to be approached/touched in public, and new social norms such as non-contact greetings, restricted mass gatherings, & fewer daily social interactions favor them.
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