The analysis, conducted by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found that the leading cause of premature death in autistic adults isn’t due to diseases, such as heart ailments or cancer, that are the main killers in the general population. It’s suicide.
The data, which include information on 27,000 people with the social-communication disorder and about 2.5 million who do not have the diagnosis from Sweden’s national registries, found that, on average, autistic adults die 18 years younger than their non-autistic counterparts.
An autistic person’s age at death also appeared to be affected by cognitive ability. Those with autism and a learning disability died 30 years earlier on average while those without intellectual impairment died 12 years earlier.