Acknowledging Autistic Adults’ Intimate Lives in Health and Social Care Policy: Analysis and Recommendations

Huysamen, Monique ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5664-998X (2022) Acknowledging Autistic Adults’ Intimate Lives in Health and Social Care Policy: Analysis and Recommendations. Project Report. SAAIL: Supporting Autistic Adults' Intimate Lives.

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Abstract

Autistic people face more social barriers to, and experience greater anxiety around, intimate relationships than the general population in our majority neurotypical society. This leads to increased loneliness and social isolation. National health and social care policies and publications should recognise these inequalities and help service systems to reduce them. We systematically analysed a cross-section of English national health and social care publications to investigate how they represent and prioritise autistic adults’ intimate lives. Our key findings are that most publications do not adequately and proportionally recognise or prioritise autistic people’s intimate lives compared to other aspects of social life and participation. Rather, they focus on the risks associated with sex and relationships and overlook autism-specific intimacy needs. Our key recommendations for policymakers are: recognise that autistic people with and without learning disabilities may have autism-specific intimacy needs; recognise the need for sex and relationship education and support across the whole lifespan; and make changes to policy-making processes so that autistic people’s expressed concerns surrounding their intimate lives are not written out of health and social care policy.