Scoping Review on Autistic Camouflaging and Mental Health Relationships

Forty-eight studies were reviewed to examine the link between autistic camouflaging and mental health. The review, authored by Ellie Kiger Hodge and last updated in June 2026, summarizes findings from qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method publications. Results indicate a positive relationship between camouflaging and poor mental health, with effect sizes ranging from small to large.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the relationship between camouflaging and depression/anxiety based on summarized study results
• Comparing the mental health impact of assimilation versus compensation camouflaging strategies
• Investigating the bidirectional nature of the camouflaging-mental health link suggested by qualitative findings
• Exploring the generalizability of findings to non-autistic populations as mentioned in the conclusions

Strengths

• Summarizes results from 48 peer-reviewed studies meeting specific eligibility criteria
• Reports effect sizes ranging from small to large for the relationship between camouflaging and mental health
• Distinguishes between different camouflaging types (assimilation, compensation, masking) in its analysis

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• The primary data file is a DOCX document, which may require parsing to extract structured information

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Scoping review of publications from Google Scholar, Psychinfo, PubMed, and JSTOR.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-02 11:09:10