Psychiatric problems of Chinese college students with high autism traits

Recent research has documented increased psychiatric problems in individuals who report elevated traits of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, most of the studies are conducted in Western countries, and suicidal behaviors in particular are scarcely examined in this population. The objective of the current study was to examine the prevalence of Chinese college students who surpassed a clinical cutoff for ASD, the correlations between ASD traits and psychiatric problems (i.e., depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder [OCD], suicidal behaviors), and factors that possibly mediated the relations between ASD traits and suicidal behaviors. Results indicated that 1.50% of individuals in the sample surpassed the clinical cutoff score for ASD. Among this group who surpassed the clinical cutoff for ASD, severity of OCD symptoms was the highest among the measured psychiatric problems. ASD traits were significantly positively correlated with depression, anxiety, suicide ideation and plans, as well as OCD and its six dimensions (i.e., ordering, washing, hoarding, checking, obsession, and neutralizing). After controlling other psychiatric indicators, however, partial correlation analysis indicated that associations between ASD traits and suicide behaviors were no longer significant. Though, depression symptoms were found to mediate the link between the ASD traits and suicide ideation (for females and males) and suicide plans (for males only). Overall, these results provide a deeper insight into the characteristics of ASD traits, as well as the relationship between ASD traits and co-occurring psychiatric symptoms in a non-Western sample of Chinese college students.