Losing nuance in camouflaging research: the unintended harms for research, clinical practice, and public discourse

Authors

Abstract

Camouflaging refers to the conscious or subconscious suppression of autistic (or neurodivergent) behaviours, and/or the use of compensatory strategies, to navigate social interactions with the aim of being perceived as neurotypical and to keep safe. The field is currently at an important turning point: camouflaging is now firmly established within autism research, but its rapid movement into public discourse and clinical practice has outpaced conceptual and measurement precision. In this Personal View, we identify two related challenges. First, existing conceptualisations often capture only one slice of the relationship between camouflaging and other outcomes (e.g. mental health), treating camouflaging as unidimensional and its associations with outcomes as linear, potentially obscuring more complex and heterogeneous relationships. Current frameworks similarly tend to quantify camouflaging behaviours without in-depth functional analysis to capture differences in agency, context, and cognitive mechanisms that may give rise to different behaviours and outcomes. We propose a multidimensional framework to capture these distinct but interacting processes and support more precise mechanistic research. Second, simplified clinical and public narratives increasingly frame camouflaging as uniformly harmful and “unmasking” as inherently desirable. We argue instead for a nuanced, neurodiversity-affirming approach centred on safety and personal autonomy. Applying the multidimensional framework clinically may help practitioners understand when, why, and how camouflaging is helpful or harmful for a particular person in a particular context.

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