Investigating gender dysphoria in autism spectrum disorder: clinical challenges and future perspectives

An increased prevalence of gender dysphoria (GD) within individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been recently highlighted. Notwithstanding, both conditions (ASD and GD) could share some common clinical features, such as socio-emotional impairment, ineffective relational strategies, atypical patterns of interests and behaviors, thus making the detection of GD in ASD particularly challenging, even for expert clinicians. As a consequence, research aiming to better explore the overlap between ASD and GD has progressively grown during recent years. Specific aim of the present overview is to briefly summarize the available literature on the topic, highlighting four symptom categories that should be deeply assessed in order to evaluate and characterize the presence of GD in ASD.