'It's designed for someone who is not me': Reflexive thematic analysis of the healthcare experiences of autistic older adults living in the UK

There is evidence to suggest that autistic individuals are more likely to experience physical and mental health difficulties throughout their lives, leading to an increased risk of mortality due to health inequalities (Hand et al., 2020; Rydzewska et al., 2019; Bishop-Fitzpatrick & Kind, 2017; Hirvikoski et al., 2016). While studies have explored the healthcare experiences of younger and middle-aged autistic adults, there is a lack of research on the experiences of autistic older adults aged 65 years or over (Mason et al., 2019; Walsh et al., 2020; Sonido et al., 2020). To address this gap, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 autistic older adults aged 65 years or over and one carer for an autistic older adult aged 68 years with a moderate co-occurring intellectual disability. Participants were interviewed about their experiences of accessing healthcare services in the UK. Reflexive thematic analysis helped co-construct four themes that include the impact of lived experiences on healthcare access challenges, the influence of system and service-level changes, the intersectionality between ageing and autism, and vital policy and practice recommendations. Overall findings suggest that autistic older adults encounter distinct healthcare challenges, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic and economic uncertainties. Current services often neglect their lifelong struggles with autism-related issues. Participants expressed concerns about age-related decline and reduced social support. To address these challenges, a comprehensive approach is needed that encompasses policy changes, healthcare adjustments, and improved staff training. Implementing these recommendations and further research is vital to improving the healthcare experiences of neurodivergent and ageing populations

Chebyshev and Conjugate Gradient Filters for Graph Image Denoising

In 3D image/video acquisition, different views are often captured with varying noise levels across the views. In this paper, we propose a graph-based image enhancement technique that uses a higher quality view to enhance a degraded view. A depth map is utilized as auxiliary information to match the perspectives of the two views. Our method performs graph-based filtering of the noisy image by directly computing a projection of the image to be filtered onto a lower dimensional Krylov subspace of the graph Laplacian. We discuss two graph spectral denoising methods: first using Chebyshev polynomials, and second using iterations of the conjugate gradient algorithm. Our framework generalizes previously known polynomial graph filters, and we demonstrate through numerical simulations that our proposed technique produces subjectively cleaner images with about 1-3 dB improvement in PSNR over existing polynomial graph filters.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, accepted to 2014 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo Workshops (ICMEW