College Students With Autism Report Higher Rates of Anxiety, Depression

TUESDAY, Aug. 19, 2025 (HealthDay News) — College students with autism face higher rates of anxiety and depression than students without autism, according to a study recently published online in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Diego A. Aragon-Guevara, from SUNY Binghamton University in New York, and colleagues used data from the 2021 National Survey of Student Engagement to compare rates of anxiety and depression, as well as gender differences, between students with (1,399 individuals) and without (146,220 individuals) autism from 342 universities in the United States and Canada.

The researchers found that students with autism reported significantly higher rates of anxiety (64.5 percent) and depression (48.2 percent) versus peers without autism (9.4 and 7.6 percent, respectively). Compared with male students, female students reported elevated rates of depression and anxiety in both the autistic and nonautistic populations.

“We”re shedding some light on the fact that if you have autistic college students in your college population — and we know the number of autistic college students continues to increase every single year — then we really do have an obligation to support these students,” coauthor Jennifer Gillis Mattson, also from SUNY Binghamton University, said in a statement. “And to know how best to support these students, we need to look beyond just autism, if you will.”

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