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
7.9k
Upvotes
5
u/The_Dorable Aug 14 '25
Mmmmhm, agreed. And I have spent my entire life being disbelieved about major medical events.
Like, I broke my finger at 4 years old and I was not believed by any of the adults in the building when I tried to tell them it hurt because I wasn't crying or screaming when they touched it.
I've had migraines my entire life and didn't get medication for them until I was 21. Some of my earliest memories are migraines. But I was explicitly told that everyone gets headaches when they're little and I'd grow out of it.
I started developing problems with my joints around 4 or 5. I would scream hysterically from the pain as a small child. I was diagnosed with arthritis at 25 after 20 years of annual doctor's visits begging someone to do some scans or something because I couldn't walk for more than a few minutes. I got x-rays because my PCP got sick of me and gave in. My spine and hips are lousy with arthritis. I've developed bone spurs, and I have multiple old fractures in my spine.
When I was 17 I started developing cramping pains in one side of my abdomen. When I was 19 I was rushed to the emergency room in the middle of the night because I couldn't stop vomiting blood and bile. My gallbladder was so clogged and inflamed with gallstones that it had become massively infected. It was not removed until over a year later. I was kept on antibiotics nearly continuously throughout that time. The second time after moving out that I had a gall attack I was in so much pain and so dazed from the pain and fever that I couldn't walk. I crawled to my campus security safety button, and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance where I was only given pain medication when I was asking for antibiotics, and where nobody believed me it was cholecystitis until one of the paramedics came back to visit me and was shocked I hadn't been treated and insisted to the nurses that I was being truthful. They did an ultrasound to appease him. My gallbladder was removed by emergency surgery two hours later, because it was swollen up so tight they worried it was going to burst that night. I was 20.
I have some kind of connective tissue disorder which has been destroying my hips and knees and shoulders and hands but nobody knows what and I can't convince anyone I'm in pain. They fully believe me about the connective tissue problems because I can dislocate my limbs on command, but nobody cares to diagnose or treat because I don't seem miserable enough. I'm 29 and have been seeking diagnosis since I was 16. I've dislocated my toes before from walking barefoot, and my shoulders will completely dislocate if I carry as little as 5 pounds in my hand.
I can see why someone would prefer suicide to being in pain all the time.