A Boston College professor is developing a virtual program to help Black youth with autism talk about their mental health.
“The goal of this is, first off, direct exposure to conversations about depression, we lower stigma, the more you talk about it, the less stigmatizing it is,” Professor Ed-Dee Williams told WBZ-TV.
Williams grew up with an older brother on the spectrum and dedicated his educational career to studying race, the disorder, and mental health. He said when he first started, there wasn’t a lot of research. “I started doing Google scholar searches, PubMed searches, trying to get an understanding of what was out there with Black youth and autism and it’s very sad to say there’s very little,” he explained.
He wanted to know what the depression rates for Black autistic youth looked like, “given there’s communication deficits, they experience bullying, higher incarceration rates, and higher suicide rates,” he said. So, he researched even further.
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