This might look a bit technical, but it is an important question. How representative is research on autism?
I have come across one or two reports which seem to point to there being a risk of suicide or attempts at suicide particularly amongst adults at the abler end of the autistic spectrum who don't show any other evidence of being at risk.
The problem with these studies is they refer to very few previous reports of this phenomena, and therefore cannot make a strong case. But their inference is that people who are abler are more likely to be working and living in environments where their disability affects them so adversely.
Currently there is a lot of research ongoing into suicide risk amongst adults on the spectrum who suffer significantly from depression. There have been a lot of published papers in the last year.
It might be deduced that the research evidence disproves a risk in abler adults not manifesting depression.
However looking through such research the autistic populations being studied are very specific to one research centre, or one diagnostic service, or one diagnostic method. There doesn't seem to be a lot of research from the broader population of people diagnosed on the autistic spectrum.
I can understand the constraints on research in accessing data nationally, but if some studies are too specific, is there any way of ensuring that there is a proportion of research carried out on more general populations.
The risk otherwise is that overly specific groups of research subjects yield misleading results.
Usually the procedure for research using restricted populations is to set down the limitations of any given study population. This is one way of flagging up the need for other populations to be studied.
It is very important in autism that research looks at a representative enough group of people.
