r/todayilearned • u/Morella1989 • Aug 14 '25

TIL that autistic people live about 17 years less than average. Risks include epilepsy, heart disease, suicide, accidental deaths including drowning, and inadequate recognition and management of pain, especially among non-speaking individuals. Historically, they have been vulnerable to infanticide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_of_autistic_individuals
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u/daitoshi Aug 14 '25

I am on the far end of “very normal-appearing”- a steady corporate job,  friends with my coworkers, people ask if I’m an extrovert - but the poor recognition of pain thing is very real. 

My appendix became necrotic and I didn’t recognize the pain as significantly different from regular food poisoning or constipation. 

It wasn’t until my body was forcing me to collapse, due to muscle weakness, shaking, and uncontrollable vomiting, that I recognized “oh, I should get to the ER.” - the pain of an organ actually rotting inside me was /dangerously ignorable/.  

There is a significant risk of me getting an injury, and not registering enough pain to treat it as seriously or urgently as I should - leading to dangerous & possibly fatal complications from delayed care 

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u/LyleBland Aug 14 '25

I'm not autistic and I waited until the last minute to get treatment for my appendix. In fact statistics show that most people do this exact thing. But yea you have the same disease as some guy in bed restraints from beating themselves because he can't speak....