I believe my father had autism undiagnosed and he lived into his 80's. Hope that gives people hope.

This worries me more.Especially as the chances of dementia are increased with a sz/sz-a dx  too. https://www.healio.com/news/primary-care/20211011/adults-with-autism-more-than-two-times-likely-to-receive-dementia-diagnosis 

I have very few things I'm even remotely good at. I'm crap at lots of things. Although it's not resulted in great achievements, and is just  a sticking plaster covering a gaping hole of ineptitude, I am quite good at high range IQ tests. It's said the average person will get 10-15% of  questions  right on such tests. I'm getting 70%+ verbal,50%+ numerical and 30%+ spatial questions right. To lose that ability would be awful. Whereas physically I've always been  badly coordinated with poor balance,gait and posture. Age has just made it a little worse than it used to be.

I actually find it scocking to hear that I am satistically likey to live a shorter life, never occured to me. However how many people over 40 have actually been disgnosed? I guess those that have been diagnosed back in the 1970-90's had more severe issues to get diagnosed in the first place. I would think there are probably 250,000 undiagnosed older adults, maybe twice that. 

I seem to have access to the full article but that might be due to my workplace having me authenticated for full-text. Might be paywalled otherwise? 

Looks like 77%  of the monitored ASD sample was categorised 'high functioning' 

With the exception of suicide - higher for 'high functioning'- and 'external (other)', the 23% 'low functioning' significantly outweighed the 77% 'high functioning' in most health categories. Eg. nervous disorders 40 to 3 deaths respectively. For mental health disorders as cause it was 22 to 2. But in each column, the percenntages do seem notionally higher than 'general population' equivalents (much bigger sample of course). Cleverer minds than mine can hopefully work out how persuasive the overall conclusion was. 

I think this is the basis of it. A large Swedish study, leading to teh article

Premature mortality in autism spectrum disorder 

by Hirvikoski et al. 

• 10.1192/bjp.bp.114.160192

Not sure how flawed or otherwise the methodology is, my brain isn't good with that stuff. 

Yes.  I think there is at least some room for positivity.  Many of the limitations might relate to societal issues which can be changed or at least individually adapted.  And, as I've said elsewhere, we do also have lots of strengths, although autism services as they stand might not emphasise these.  

Plus there's always one important question that I believe any individual looking at these figures and worrying should ask - were the people in these studies people like me?  

I really believe that, as is often contained in the conclusions to such studies, more (and better!) research is needed.

I'd like to see some analysis of the cohorts used in these studies.  I've seen the figure of 54 bandied about too.  It's good in a way, as it draws attention to the difficulties we face and obviously charities will use it for that reason.  However, it can also be very anxiety provoking.  If I took it seriously (I really don't), I guess I'd be led to believe that I'm living on borrowed time!

I should clarify that's a joke at my own expense - I've just wished you improbable immortality! No offense remotely meant. 65 isn't really 'old' any more, so hope you have many more years ahead

I'm very glad you are. And I hope you stay that way. Within reason! :-)

With both Asperger's/ASD  & sz/sz-a, both known for people dying prematurely, I guess I'm lucky to still be alive at 65.

I've seen an even lower one of 54 (maybe that was for all levels combined?). I was surprised initially too. But after thinking about it, it makes sense. So many health complexities - mental and physical- more common in autistic people  and constant unavoidable anxiety not as easily mitigated as in the general populace by CBT etc.- must take their collective toll. However, bear in mind that, as with all mean averages, there is a bell curve involved. So once people are beyond the 'red zone', they contain a subset who stand as decent a chance as an NT person of making it to an age where one  feels one got one's money's worth. 

Which means that there must indeed be many elderly people (undiagnosed in many cases of course) with autism.. Jenny's father likely having been one of them it seems. I'm sorry for your loss Jenny, losing a parent at any age is very hard. 

That thing about radios on wards occurred to me too when my own father (thankfully still with us, after a very in the balance situation) was in ICU for a week last November. While he was deeply under and on a ventilator, a radio was constantly playing music in the background (not blasting, but not very quiet either) and I wondered what subtle impact it might still be having on the uncosnious, as well as the much more consious impact on the few awake patients. I feel bad saying it as the nursing staff were excellent, but that kind of environmental stressor is taken as an allowable given so ubiquitously sometimes that it does make me feel a bit unusual in finding it too much. My own father seems to have some neurodivergent traits (in my opinion) but I've no real insight into what he may or not be in any definitive way. But I can understand, Jenny, how you got to the point of being relatively certain after a lot of thought.

Thanks for this Jenny butterfly.  When I first started researching autism after being told that I was most likely autistic I came across this statistic, I was startled to say the least. Your take is much more reassuring and probably more accurate than the previous research. I'm starting to think that autism doesn't have to be a death sentence as these type of figures suggest. I'm also aware that the condition is majorly life limiting for so many, this inequality does certainly need highlighting. 

Oh no….is this correct? 

I was in hospital last year and I thought the same thing - it’s a terrible environment for autistic people. Actually I think it’s a terrible environment for lots on non-autistic people too.

Nowhere near enough attention is given to making hospital a peaceful, comfortable, restful place. To heal you need peace and comfort. 

Yes, there are factors that impinge on our life expectancy, that's true, and I wouldn't want to detract from the very real concerns around this.  There has been significant mental illness and suicidality within my own family so these figures really bother me.

But still, I'm not sure that the figures are as bad as the studies show, depending of course upon how they're derived.  My thoughts are that the life expectancy figures probably don't include older people who, because of the low level of knowledge and awareness in their younger years, were never diagnosed. And if the figures aren't fully inclusive, they'll probably be misrepresentative.  Likewise for females who didn't previously get diagnosed because they didn't fit the stereotypical presentation of autism based on older studies that focussed on small numbers of young boys who often also had learning disabilities.  Or even for males with a non stereotypical presentation.  Lots of older studies did us a major disservice and skewed the stats.  

I can't say that it's not bad.  It probably is, given the pressures we face and also including the difficulties of access to healthcare for some, because it's often just not autism-friendly.  But equally I don't want to worry too much about this because it's very hard to gauge the probabilities that we each face as individuals.  Certainly I'm hoping to live for a good long time yet and I've already gone above that average figure, although only just.  Still, so did my parents (undiagnosed) and most of my very large family (Catholic on my dad's side).  We seem to get well into our 80s or 90s but I don't think that we, or people lke us, will be represented in that average figure.   We're not dead, we're just not included in the stats.      

Part of the problem is that there aren’t that many elderly autistic people. I read a paper recently I think it said the average life expectancy of a high functioning autistic person was 58