How Prevalent Is Anxiety/Depression Amongst Autistic People?

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I think it's a pretty well-known fact that people on the spectrum are more prone to anxiety and depression.

I'm curious as to how many people on the spectrum are affected by anxiety/depression, and as to whether it's anxiety or depression that is more prominent among us.

Both?

I have some social anxiety, and I get depressed when people treat me badly, so both I guess?

I have anxiety.

I voted anxiety, but I really suffer from both.

I am strongly affected by both depression & anxiety.

Diagnosed major depression, disthymic disorder (a form of low level persistent depession present consistently) & generalized anxiety disorder.

Both, equally.

I struggle with both. And they affect my life even more negatively than asperger's.

I've had a good run with both for the past 3 months.. Before hand it was usually just depressive episodes, but anxiety has been playing a big role lately as well... Combined, it's a nightmare.....

These two problems are prevalent among us. I'm not sure I've heard of someone on the spectrum without one or the other.

anxiety

Ages 0 - 8 = Neither
Ages 9 - 13 = Anxiety only
Ages 14 - 16 = Both Anxiety and Depression
Ages 17 - NOW = Neither


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Depression has been around for 3/4 of my life, but anxiety is fairly new. It has been ahead for a couple of years.

I'm currently waiting for an assessment for ASD but definately have anxiety & depression and to be honest I'm not sure how to guage which is more prominent as they both fluctuate. I don't even know which came first.

Depression takes the lead here. Anxiety has lessened some with time, but still there daily.

I think that a lot of anxiety is possibly "learned anxiety" in the sense that people on the spectrum realise after a while that they can never really know how neurotypical people in the next new work, educational or social setting are going to react, and when the next "attack" experience is coming (so often in the form of namecalling like "you're weird"). Being treated unkindly is one thing, but the unpredictability and social humiliation are added stresses which accumulate over time.

Some anxiety is no doubt due to neurotransmitter differences which have been found on the spectrum, but not all I think - we are social creatures, yet so many of us end up with social anxiety after having been publicly shamed for often trivial social errors. This situational competent of learned anxiety is ignored by therapists, it seems, so that the victim of social shaming is just not supported nor really acknowledged, but viewed as an intrinsically anxious person with an internally generated "anxiety disorder".

In one sense I see anxiety disorders as communicating a history of unhealed, unacknowledged, attacks and wounds; people on the spectrum seem generally so quick to internalise all blame for any perceived defect. In another I see this prevalence of anxiety as representing the strain of living life on a continual tightrope when walking in every kind of social situation - an ever present anxiety about the next fall, always trying to make it to the other side unharmed.