The charity said that more than 70 per cent of children with autism have a mental health problem, such as depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and other anxiety disorders, despite the fact that this is often preventable. Mental health problems are often dismissed as an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of having autism, the charity said.
The NAS is calling on the Government to ensure autism training for mental health professionals and access to specialist support across the UK, after its research found that many mental health professionals lacked basic autism training.
A shortage of specialist provision often results in long waiting times and families being turned away. But those families that do receive specialist support are twice as likely to see an improvement in their child's mental health.
The NAS survey of 450 parents of children with autistic spectrum disorders found that two-thirds of parents said that mental health services failed to improve the mental health of their child.
Eighty-three per cent of children experienced mental health problems before the age of ten and more than half before the age of five.
Mark Lever, chief executive of the NAS said, 'Too many children with autism are developing preventable mental health problems and find themselves up against a broken system that doesn't understand them or their needs. All too often they receive inappropriate, ineffectual and sometimes harmful treatments.
'This has a devastating effect on families, many of whom develop their own mental health problems as a result. The NHS needs to know how to help them, and the Government needs to know it can't wait.'
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