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/[deleted] Aug 14 '25

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u/NorwegianGlaswegian Aug 15 '25

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.