This video recording (55 minutes) featuring Dr Darren Hedley.

Autistic people face experience low rates of labour force participation as well as high under- and unemployment. Autistic people also have high rates of cooccurring psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety and depression, and suicide.

Recently, multi-national companies have started recognizing strengths of Autistic people in areas such as pattern recognition and attention to detail, and are actively recruiting them into technology-related roles. This presentation examines the evidence behind this “Autism advantage”, and overviews our research with one of the big tech companies that employs autistic people. Importantly, though, Autistic people face difficulties sustaining employment, even with support. This is probably due to challenges associated with autism as well as co-occurring conditions. The remainder of the presentation examines our research in mental health, and in particular suicide prevention, in Autism.

Published September 2020

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