increased depression and suicide rates in autistic adults

Depression is even more likely to affect those in the autism community than it affects neurotypicals and the non-disabled, because of the lifelong torture that people with autism go through on a daily basis. And people on the autism spectrum also have a high suicide risk, according to medical research and proven psychology articles. Which is why as someone with Asperger syndrome I find myself wondering if I will continue to suffer from depression and have thoughts of suicide for the rest of my life.

There was this group of ASD and Asperger Syndrome adults who had either contemplated suicide or considered doing so after being diagnosed at a clinic, because they ended up suffering from depression. I also heard about one autistic man who eventually committed suicide. I don't want to end up amongst those people - even though I won't be able to break free from my severe depression.

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  • The average life expenctancy of people with Asperger's is 54.  The main cause of early death is suicide.  The incidence of suicide is, so I've read, 9 times higher for autistic people without a learning disability than for the rest of the population.

    I live in a constant state of depression - low-level for the most part, but always there.  I take comfort from the thought that suicide is always there as an option for me.  That's not a 'normal' or particularly rational thing to say.  I have a young colleague who survived cancer and is living with the thought that the likelihood is high that it will come back at some stage in the future.  She soaks up every moment of life... and tells me that I should do the same.  It feels churlish to disagree with her.  But the circumstances otherwise are entirely different.  She has a partner, a wonderful family, loads of friends - in short, a lot to live for.  I sometimes wonder what I still have to live for, apart from simply getting older and probably having some age-related disease come upon me.  I'm already showing early signs of arthritis in some of my finger and toe joints.  I drink too much, but it's a comfort.  It's the one thing, really, that gives me some release.

    I attended a workshop the other week on 'Autism and Mental Health', run by my local authority.  It was good to see a lot of autistic people turning out and telling the panel how they felt, what they needed, etc.  At one point, the terminology shifted from 'mental health' to 'mental illness'.  I pointed out the qualitative differences between them.  I asked, too, for some clarification on how they reached their definitions.  I said that I function relatively 'normally'.  I hold down a job.  I keep a home.  I pay my bills and meet all my responsibilities.  On the surface, there's little to indicate that I have any problems.  But then I pointed out that the idea of suicide is ever-present in my mind, and that I find my daily life increasingly exhausting.  But I carry on with it.  What does that make me?  Depressed?  Mentally ill?  I couldn't get a clear answer on that one.

    I haven't attempted suicide since my diagnosis, because it gave me more of a sense of personal validation and vindication.  But before it, I made several attempts.  I was lucky to survive two of them.

    I carry on with the thought that I can never know if life can get better unless I give it the chance to get better.

  • For me, it's maybe not a normal thing to say, but it's certainly part of my "normal" to think of suicide often. I can't say that I think of it as irrational, either; when I've had enough of doing something, it seems rational enough to want to stop; whether it's picking my nose or being alive. I've given up trying to get through to people that my lack of fear of death is real and complete; wanting to feel nothing more seems very logically and emotionally preferable to feeling awful; it's the emotional bond that people have with being alive for it's own sake that seems irrational to me.

    I think that's the part that I've struggled with the most; that I'm encouraged to talk about these things, but other people's (including mental health workers') conception of them is so different to mine - they never understand that I have never been without depression or suicidal thoughts almost every day since, at the latest, my early teens. This is my "normal", so I don't exhibit the expected melodrama; I get accused of being flippant because my talk about them is so matter of fact, or I'm accused of simply lying that I even have them. How could anyone have those thoughts without being in a blind existential panic? I don't know, but they're still there.

    I takes extreme effort even to look for help with them - no-one else goes to a doctor just to tell them that everything is exactly as it normally is, so why would I? When I'm asked what particular event or mood has made me feel suicidal, I can never answer. For sure, alexithymia has its part to play in that, but more profoundly, I don't see why there should be an answer - there needs to be no specific trauma or emotion; it just is, and always has been, there. I've yet to see a therapist that could get anywhere with this aspect of my life because I don't have the discrete traumas or visceral reactions that they seem to need to hang their interventions on.

    The ultimate reaction of professionals seems to be; well, I've had these thoughts most days for several decades, and I'm still here, so just carry on carrying on. I never mention it to people in my personal life because I can't bear their melodramatic responses, or accusations that I'm just looking for attention

    Curiosity is what keeps me going; it drives the special interests that distract me, and the morbid fascination that keeps me alive sometimes; How much longer can the world carry on being so awful? Can it get any worse? Might some others accept that I was right all along? I have been saved from suicide by procrastinating about those things many times; so maybe my executive function impairments have a "positive" side all along!

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  • For me, it's maybe not a normal thing to say, but it's certainly part of my "normal" to think of suicide often. I can't say that I think of it as irrational, either; when I've had enough of doing something, it seems rational enough to want to stop; whether it's picking my nose or being alive. I've given up trying to get through to people that my lack of fear of death is real and complete; wanting to feel nothing more seems very logically and emotionally preferable to feeling awful; it's the emotional bond that people have with being alive for it's own sake that seems irrational to me.

    I think that's the part that I've struggled with the most; that I'm encouraged to talk about these things, but other people's (including mental health workers') conception of them is so different to mine - they never understand that I have never been without depression or suicidal thoughts almost every day since, at the latest, my early teens. This is my "normal", so I don't exhibit the expected melodrama; I get accused of being flippant because my talk about them is so matter of fact, or I'm accused of simply lying that I even have them. How could anyone have those thoughts without being in a blind existential panic? I don't know, but they're still there.

    I takes extreme effort even to look for help with them - no-one else goes to a doctor just to tell them that everything is exactly as it normally is, so why would I? When I'm asked what particular event or mood has made me feel suicidal, I can never answer. For sure, alexithymia has its part to play in that, but more profoundly, I don't see why there should be an answer - there needs to be no specific trauma or emotion; it just is, and always has been, there. I've yet to see a therapist that could get anywhere with this aspect of my life because I don't have the discrete traumas or visceral reactions that they seem to need to hang their interventions on.

    The ultimate reaction of professionals seems to be; well, I've had these thoughts most days for several decades, and I'm still here, so just carry on carrying on. I never mention it to people in my personal life because I can't bear their melodramatic responses, or accusations that I'm just looking for attention

    Curiosity is what keeps me going; it drives the special interests that distract me, and the morbid fascination that keeps me alive sometimes; How much longer can the world carry on being so awful? Can it get any worse? Might some others accept that I was right all along? I have been saved from suicide by procrastinating about those things many times; so maybe my executive function impairments have a "positive" side all along!

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