• Replies 12 replies
  • Subscribers 85 subscribers
  • Views 198 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

autistic adults more likely to experience hallucinations?

Alexa

I've just come across a couple of articles in popular scientific journals that claim that autistic adults are three times more likely than allistic adults to experience hallucinations. This gives you a flavour:
https://neurodivergentinsights.com/hallucinations-and-autism/?srsltid=AfmBOoqWoWghLoQP1ZWb7x4fYgCXDAX9Ik4DU7G_oHxR0MgXm2TABIG5

This is by one of the researchers, back in 2017 when the research was published:
https://theconversation.com/autistic-people-are-three-times-more-likely-to-have-hallucinations-77337

I found this repeated within the health service when I googled and downloaded a document from Oxford NHS Trust as a typical example. It stated: Researchers have shown that people with Autism are up to 3 times more likely to have hallucinations. Often when people with autism hear voices, they are hearing their own thoughts spoken aloud in their head. And quoted the second article I linked to, which provided the link to the original research paper:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177804#sec002

Now, the scary thing for me is the number of autistic adults who were part of this study. It wasn't hundreds. It was 30, 7 of whom were women. Yet NHS trusts and articles in science=based media are circulating this without qualification. In my experience, basing 'facts' on one experiment involving only 23 men and 7 women would be regarded as dicey when applied to neurotypical adults. What do you think? Have you experienced such hallucinations? Is it common? 

I'll post the poster derived from the research in comments (as images and texts put a strain on the forum)

Parents

  • I wonder if the statistic also relates to studies that claim the population of autistic people are apparently 3x more likely to be schizophrenic?

    Would still be a skewed stat as not all schizophrenics also suffer with hallucinations (or are autistic for that matter), but wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those stats that become true just by being quoted/bent out of shape. 

  • in reply to Acquiesce

    I wonder if the studies that claim autistic people are three times more likely to be schizophrenic are including all the people who get misdiagnosed with mental health illnesses before someone realises they're actually autistic? It's very hard to get a diagnosis removed once you've been given it, even it later proves to be false, this is really bad for things like schizophrenia because unlike something like measles which you get, it runs its course and you get better, schizphrenia is life long.

    I agree that it makes it easier to gaslight autistics.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    That is very true and something I have direct experience with - fortunately I didn't get sectioned at one very difficult point in my life and here I am: just plain old autistic!

Reply Children
No Data