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Autistic individuals are more likely to have chronic mental and physical health conditions, suggests new research from the ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ. Autistic individuals also report lower quality healthcare than others.

An international team of researchers has created a series of brain charts spanning our entire lifespan – from a 15 week old fetus to 100 year old adult – that show how our brains expand rapidly in early life and slowly shrink as we age. 

The criminal justice system (CJS) is failing autistic people, argue researchers at the Autism Research Centre, ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ, after a survey of lawyers found that an overwhelming majority of their clients were not provided with adequate support or adjustments.

A significant number of people who died by suicide were likely autistic, but undiagnosed, according to new research that highlights the urgent need for earlier diagnosis and tailored support for suicide prevention.

Research involving more than 350,000 participants from six continents has found that links between musical preferences and personality are universal. The study suggests that music could play a greater role in overcoming social division.

New research from the ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ suggests that autistic individuals are less likely to identify as heterosexual and more likely to identify with a diverse range of sexual orientations than non-autistic individuals.

An ambitious new research project, Spectrum 10K, launches today and will recruit 10,000 autistic individuals, as well as their relatives, living in the UK.

While autistic individuals are less likely to use substances, those who do so are more likely to self-medicate for their mental health symptoms, according to new research from the ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ and published today in The Lancet Psychiatry.

Autistic people have far greater risks of long term physical health conditions than others, but the reasons for this remain unclear. New research from the ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ suggests that unhealthy lifestyle habits may be an important contributing factor. 

Around one in 57 (1.76%) children in the UK is on the autistic spectrum, significantly higher than previously reported, according to a study of more than seven million children carried out by researchers from the ¹ú¼ÊÃ×À¼¶ÔÕó¿ÆĪ’s Department of Psychiatry, in collaboration with researchers from Newcastle University and Maastricht University.