Brief Report: Bullying and Anxiety in High-Functioning Adolescents with ASD.
Ask high-functioning teens with ASD directly about bullying—half report recent victimization and it links to social anxiety.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked 45 high-functioning teens with ASD about bullying.
Each teen and a parent filled out short questionnaires.
No one got an intervention; they just counted who had been bullied recently.
What they found
Half of the teens said they had been bullied in the past few months.
Parents agreed only some of the time; teens reported more.
When parents did notice bullying, their teens also scored higher on social-anxiety checks.
How this fits with other research
Shyu et al. (2026) extends these numbers: the same social anxiety tied to bullying here later predicted poor quality of life in almost the same age group.
Matson et al. (2011) asked parents nationwide; they too flagged bullying worries, but their rate of anxiety/depression was a large share. The new teen self-report pushes the bullying count higher, showing kids see more than parents hear.
Mamimoué et al. (2024) pull both papers together in a review, concluding that social-relationship stressors like bullying raise depression risk and that no ASD-specific mood tool yet asks about peer victimization—so adding a bullying item is still up to you.
Why it matters
Half of your bright, conversational clients are likely walking into bullying this month. Ask them directly; parents will miss some cases. Track social anxiety right after disclosure—it climbs together. While you teach social skills, weave in emotional safety plans and consider adding a quick bullying screen to your intake forms; no validated scale does it for you yet.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Youth with ASD are more likely to experience bullying than their typically developing peers. This risk has not been studied in youth with ASD transitioning to college. We examined the occurrence of bullying in 35 high functioning youth with ASD who were preparing to attend college. We also examined youth anxiety and ASD symptoms. Fifty-one percent of the sample reported being recent victims of bullying; 31% of parents reported their child was a victim of bullying. Parent report of bullying correlated significantly with ratings of youth social anxiety symptoms. These findings suggest that bullying is an issue of concern for higher functioning, older adolescents with ASD, and that their own reports may be particularly important in identifying its occurrence.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2018 · doi:10.1007/s10803-017-3378-8