App-based meditation habits maintain reductions in depression symptoms among autistic adults.

Autistic adults face elevated depression risk, which harms daily functioning and life outcomes. App-based meditation helps neurotypical adults manage depression, but long-term evidence for autistic adults was lacking. Anchoring, a habit-formation strategy, had not been tested in this group. This work shows that combining anchoring with app-based meditation is feasible and effective for establishing meditation habits in autistic adults. These habits maintained reduced depressive symptoms over six months. The findings indicate anchoring-based habit formation is a promising technique for building healthy habits in autistic adults, and app-based meditation offers a durable self-care option for managing depression in this population.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Existing research has identified an increased risk of depression among autistic adults, which can negatively impact their adaptive functioning abilities and socioeconomic outcomes. Mobile app-based meditation is a feasible, accessible, and effective self-care solution for depression among neurotypical adults, but there is limited evidence for the long-term benefits of app-based meditation among autistic adults. Habits are a key behavioral strategy for maintaining behavior change, and anchoring is one effective habit formation intervention that has yet to be tested among autistic adults. This study demonstrates that it is both feasible and effective to integrate the anchoring habit formation strategy into an app-based meditation intervention for establishing meditation habits among autistic adults. In addition, the study shows that app-based meditation habits were successful at maintaining reductions in depressive symptoms over 6 months. These results demonstrate the power of anchoring-based habit formation interventions for establishing healthy habits among autistic adults, which offers a promising behavioral intervention technique for establishing other healthy habits among autistic adults. The study also shows that app-based meditation habits are an effective long-term self-care solution for managing depressive symptoms among autistic adults that should be used by mental health providers and policymakers. Future research should test this combined anchoring and app-based meditation intervention technique among larger samples of autistic adults and over longer durations to better understand the mechanisms underlying the success of this intervention.