Parent Perspectives on Psychotropic Medication Use and Interactions With Prescribing Health Care Providers Among Adolescents and Adults With an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Adolescents and young adults with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often prescribed psychotropic medications to treat mental health and behavioral issues, and parents of these individuals play a crucial role in overseeing this care. Despite this, little is known about parents’ experiences managing and monitoring their child’s medication treatment, or their experience interacting with prescribing health care providers. To learn more about parents’ perspectives on psychotropic medication use in their adolescent or young adult with ASD, a focus group was conducted with seven mothers whose adolescent or adult child with ASD was prescribed one or more psychotropic medications. Results are summarized according to emergent themes including parent perception of child experience with medication, side effects, medication efficacy, medication monitoring, expertise issues, and service issues. Parents also provided medication recommendations, including a desire for health care providers with greater expertise in ASD, information on medication, and tools for medication monitoring.

“We Have to Try to Find a Way, a Clinical Bridge” - autistic adults' experience of accessing and receiving support for mental health difficulties: A systematic review and thematic meta-synthesis

“…Thereby, it will be important to collaborate with autistic adults to ensure acceptability of potential interventions (Benevides et al, 2020). Further, with the high use of psychotropic medication in autistic adults (Nylander, Axmon, Bjorne, Ahlstrom, & Gillberg, 2018), there is a specific need for more research exploring the effectiveness and experiences of medication use in this population (Esbensen, Greenberg, Seltzer, & Aman, 2009;Lake, Milovanov, Sawyer, & Lunsky, 2015). It is possible that an over-reliance on medication stems from a false belief amongst clinicians that autistic individuals are unable to engage in or benefit from talking therapies.…”

Development and evaluation of a novel caregiver-report tool to assess barriers to physical healthcare for people on the autism spectrum

“…For autistic individuals, difficulty on following up on care may be related to patient level factors such as issues with executive function ( Raymaker et al, 2016 ). For caregivers, this may reflect systemic issues (e.g., being unable to get referrals; Chiri & Warfield, 2012 ), or HCP-level barriers (e.g., poor communication between the HCP and caregiver; Lake, Milovanov, Sawyer, & Lunsky, 2014 ). Future research could investigate this more thoroughly.…”