What is it about?

Autistic adults and adults with ADHD can face stigma because of their diagnosis. To avoid negative judgement, many people camouflage, or mask, to hide their differences in social situations. We investigated camouflaging in Australian adults with autism and/or ADHD. We thought that people might camouflage more if they have experienced stigma or if they have more autistic/ADHD traits. So, we conducted analyses to investigate how autistic traits, ADHD symptoms, and experience of stigma related to camouflaging while also considering age, gender, age of onset of autism or ADHD, and diagnostic background.

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Why is it important?

While camouflaging can help people “fit in” socially, it is linked to poorer mental health. We found that more than half of the participants reported experiencing stigma and that those who did camouflage more. Understanding what drives camouflaging is important for improving wellbeing and creating more supportive environments.

Perspectives

This work was part of my Honours thesis. As one of my first experiences with research, I am very happy to have it published and hope someone finds it useful or interesting.

Mr Matthew J Giblett
University of Queensland

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Autism traits, ADHD symptoms, and stigma as predictors of social camouflaging in adults from the Australian ASD and ADHD study, Research in Neurodiversity, November 2026, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.rin.2026.100047.
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