Monday, May 14, HealthDay News)–young adults with autism spectrum disorder are less likely to continue their education or get a job after high school when compared with young adults with disabilities, new research shows.
According to research, only about 35 percent of young adults with autism attend college and only 55 percent have work for six years after high school. Overall, they face a greater than 50 percent chance of being unemployed or don’t attend college when compared to those with other disabilities, researchers reported.
More than half of the autistic young adults have no participation in work or education for two years after leaving high school, and even six years later more than a third of the unearned or higher education, the study found.
“Many families with children with autism describes leaving high school to fall off a cliff because of lack of services for adults with autism spectrum disorder,” said study senior author Paul Shattuck, Assistant Professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. “So much of the media attention focused on children. This is important for people to realize that autism does not disappear in adolescence. The majority of lifeis spent in adulthood. “
Part of the reason that young adults struggle after high school is that the core features of the disorder have trouble knowing how to interpret social interactions and handle a variety of social situations, something which is absolutely necessary in many jobs, experts say.
