Knowing and accepting oneself: Exploring possibilities of self-awareness among working autistic young adults.

This study looked at how young autistic adults understand themselves - their challenges, strengths, and what support they need. Instead of focusing only on problems, the researchers wanted to understand how autistic people see themselves and what works for them. The study suggests that when professionals plan support, they should listen to what autistic people say about their own needs and experiences.

This qualitative study explores self-awareness and self-knowledge among working autistic young adults, examining how they identify their own difficulties, strengths, and support needs. The research challenges deficit-focused approaches to autism by highlighting the importance of autistic people's own perspectives and self-understanding. The study investigates how autistic individuals formulate their experiences to communicate effectively with support professionals. The researchers emphasize that autistic people's self-knowledge should be central to support planning and interventions provided by formal support services, such as social workers, to ensure these services are truly helpful and appropriate.

Supports incorporating autistic individuals' self-knowledge and perspectives into support planning. Suggests moving away from deficit-only models toward strengths-based approaches. Emphasizes the importance of listening to autistic people's own understanding of their needs when developing interventions and support services.

The abstract provides insufficient detail about methodology, sample characteristics, data collection methods, or specific findings. Study type and sample size are not reported, making it difficult to assess the quality and generalizability of results.

When researchers and professionals talk about autism, they commonly point out problems and risks with autism or being autistic. Several interventions are based on the idea of the problems and risks of autism. Another way of talking about autism is to point out autistic people's strengths and strategies which they use to handle barriers and problems in their lives in order to live good lives on their own terms. In this article, the researchers explore how autistic young adults formulate their own difficulties, strengths and support needs in order to get right support from support people.

To be able to formulate this, autistic people need to get to know oneself and one's own way of functioning. Autistic own self-knowledge must be central when formal support people, such as social workers, formulate support and interventions aimed at helping autistic people, in order for the support/intervention to be helpful.