Why are we dying?

Sammy Alban-Stanley was just thirteen when he died. Photograph: Patricia Alban

Autistic people of all ages are dying long before they should. But it isn’t autism itself that’s killing us.

The BBC reported this morning on two autistic teenagers who died due to what a coroner called ‘repeated failure in care’ by their local health authority. In other words, their deaths should not have happened.

One of them, Sammy Alban-Stanley, was just thirteen years old, the other boy only fifteen.

And these teens were far from alone. The BBC’s research into untimely autistic deaths found a variety of causes, but nearly half were categorised by coroners as relating to mental health or suicide. In other words, they were the result of inadequate care and support.

Life expectancy for autistic people is much less than for the general population. However, as the BBC pointed out: ‘People do not die of autism. It is a neurological condition that affects how people interact with others, learn and behave.’

Average UK life expectancy is slightly shy of 82 years. Yet a Swedish study of 27,000 autistic adults, with 2.7 million members of the general population as a control, found autistics with a co-occurring learning disability lived on average only 39 years. Epilepsy was their leading cause of death, suicide the second.

Those without a learning disability lived on average 58 years. Their leading cause of death? Suicide.

According to research charity Autistica, up to two-thirds of autistic people have considered suicide, and those without a learning disability are nine times more likely than the general population to die that way.

Autistic children are twenty-eight times more likely to think about or try suicide than their neurotypical peers. One study showed fifteen per cent of autistic youngsters had suicidal thoughts compared to just 0.5 per cent of typically developing children.

Why is this being allowed to happen? Does nobody care?