December 4, 2015

Paul Shattuck, PhD, associate professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health and director of the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute's Life Course Outcomes Research Program, is quoted in a National Journal story about adults on the autism spectrum. The article discusses an A.J. Drexel Aut­ism In­sti­tute re­port that Shattuck and colleagues released last year which showed that just 19 per­cent of young adults with aut­ism have lived in­de­pend­ently from their par­ents, com­pared with 80 per­cent of young people with learn­ing dis­ab­il­it­ies. The re­port also found that more than one-third of adults in their early 20s with aut­ism were “dis­con­nec­ted,” mean­ing they were not con­tinu­ing edu­ca­tion or hold­ing a job after high school. “Young people in the aut­ism cat­egory, gen­er­ally they are worse than their peers who have oth­er kinds of dis­ab­il­it­ies in terms of em­ploy­ment and a range of oth­er out­comes,” said Shat­tuck.

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