Sleep and Autism

Additional Information

Literature Review

The purpose of our literature review was to identify existing scientific reviews and clinical guidance on the topic of sleep and autism in order to provide evidence for our own review on this topic.

Search Terms

We used a variety of search terms, including synonyms and related terms for autism (such as Asperger syndrome), sleep (such as insomnia), intervention (such as treatment), review, and clinical guidance.

Results

We identified 26 reviews and 2 clinical guidance documents, as well as more than 200 other research studies.

Please see Research for details of the reviews, and Reading for details of the clinical guidance documents and other publications, we used in the review.

Where we identified a useful publication on this topic but did not include it in our review, we added it to Research Autism Publications Database.

Strengths and Limitations

Our review was limited to an analysis of reviews and clinical guidance on sleep problems in autistic people, published between 1990 and 2013.

It was not intended to be a systematic review of all research studies on the topic of sleep in autism, nor we did we carry out a meta-analysis of the reviews we identified.

Summary of Review

You can find a summary of our review, the Essential Guide to Sleep and Autism in the Reading section of this entry.

Updated

16 Jun 2022

Last Review

01 May 2018

Next Review

01 May 2021