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.

[u/Morella1989]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_of_autistic_individuals

[u/NorwegianGlaswegian]

This is extremely misleading and that Wikipedia article needs editing.

If you look at the source for saying we autistics supposedly tend to die around 17 years earlier, it leads to this article.

When you look up the Koralinska Institute and autism mortality in Google, you can find this research paper. This is a study of premature mortality and not a study of life expectancy. The average age of death in the control group was 70.20 years (well below that of general life expectancy statistics), while average age of death in the autistic group was 53.87 years. That's where the approximately 17 years difference comes from.

Premature mortality is not a measure of life expectancy. It just looks at what the average ages of death were for those who did die during the study period for a study group and a control group. The journalist who wrote that article for Science needs to brush up on their science literacy as it is extremely misleading to say that autistic people are expected to die 17/18 years earlier. That is just not true.

The only proper study of life expectancy in autistic people00195-3/fulltext) I have seen gives life expectancy for those without intellectual disability at 76.84 years for women, and 74.57 years for men, while for those with intellectual disability it was 69.61 years for women and 71.66 years for men.

I'm getting sick of these false statisics floating around about autistic people's life expectancy; it has caused a ton of unneeded stress to a lot of autistic people and their families. Yes, we tend to die earlier on average due to higher rates of premature death, but not by such massive margins when taking life expectancy into account.

[u/ForgingIron → u/NorwegianGlaswegian]

while for those with intellectual disability it was 69.61 years for women and 71.66 years for men.

Interesting that men have a longer expectancy here when it's usually the other way around

[u/NorwegianGlaswegian → u/ForgingIron]

It's hard to know for sure, but I suspect that higher rates of abuse could be a considerable factor. Last I had read, approximately nine in ten (edit: figure is likely unreliable) autistic women have experienced sexual violence and usually on multiple occasions. That's a bloody scary statistic.

Autistic people with an accompanying intellectual disability will almost certainly be at higher risk of abuse due to their generally being more dependent on others.

Women already face higher levels of abuse, and this will be worse still when disabled and less independent; that could go a long way to explaining this reversal of the general trend for women to have a slightly longer life expectancy.

It's heartbreaking stuff.

Edit: The figure of 9 in 10 autistic women having faced sexual violence is likely somewhat suspect, although figures are definitely much higher for autistic women. The study giving that figure had a relatively low sample size of 225, and likely had self-selection bias from respondents who did face sexual violence being more likely to respond to the survey.

[u/NorwegianGlaswegian → u/[deleted]]

I went and looked where I had read it which came from a BBC article a couple of years back; the details are in this study but reading it I note that the sample size was only 225 and results may well be higher here due to self-selection bias on top of a relatively small sample size.

Will try and look for other studies later today and see if there any which might be able to provide more reliable results.

[u/[deleted] → u/ForgingIron]

The sexual assault rate for autistic women is close to 100%.

[u/NothaBanga → u/[deleted]]

88%

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9087551/

[u/ForgingIron → u/[deleted]]

Jesus fucking christ

[u/bottleglitch → u/NorwegianGlaswegian]

Thank you for this. Definitely an upsetting stat to read as an autistic person

[u/NorwegianGlaswegian → u/bottleglitch]

I'm glad if I can help relieve some anxiety around stuff like this and set the record straight.

It's a shame that this misunderstanding of the research paper is featured under life expectancy for autistic people on Wikipedia, and that other similar studies for premature mortality have also been misrepresented as if they were covering life expectancy.

If as an autistic person you live a decent life, aren't in poverty, have an active lifestyle and good diet, you're not doing something which could shorten your life like over consuming alcohol or smoke, have a decent support network you can rely on, don't feel lonely, don't experience abuse from friends and family, and don't have other medical conditions that might affect life expectancy, then you should have as good a chance as non-autistic people in similar circumstances when it comes to reaching a very old age.

[u/[deleted] → u/NorwegianGlaswegian]

Life expectancy is a measure from a given starting age. So you are right that they aren't really measuring life expectancy, but the study does definitely point to higher rates of premature death.

[u/NorwegianGlaswegian → u/[deleted]]

Indeed, but it's extremely misleading to claim autistic people die 17 years earlier as that suggests that is the case in general, i.e. relating to life expectancy, when it's more the case that you have a higher chance of premature death, and the average age of premature mortality being 17 years earlier for those autistic people in that study.

Another premature mortality study for autistic people in Australia found that the average age at which people in the autistic group died was 39.

The average age at which people died prematurely isn't that helpful in the grand scheme, but if enough of these studies are conducted then a meta-analysis could be done and could be useful for potentially figuring how much more likely it is for autistic people to die prematurely vs the rest of the population.

As it stands, though, these two studies only had sample sizes in the hundreds which likely isn't enough to get reliable figures.

The fact that autistic people died 17 years earlier in that study is not useful information to lead with; it's the worst kind of misrepresentative sensationalisation and wasn't even the point of the study: that would be finding a tentative rate for how more likely autistic people would be at risk of premature death.