LIVED EXPERIENCE Autism, anxiety and suicidal thoughts By Alex Peak, London volunteer Openly talking about suicide has come to the forefront of the national conversation recently and we’re talking about it more than ever before. As PAPYRUS volunteers, we are promoting awareness and want to help prevent young people from taking their lives as much as we can. However, not much has been said about the connections between suicide, anxiety and learning disabilities, specifically autism. Mental health conditions and learning disabilities are often linked, and as such need to be treated in tandem. Tackling mental health issues in autistic people can be done in several different ways, including promoting neurodiversity in the workplace and helping to reduce the impact of isolation.
Anxiety from a young age It’s hard enough living with autism at home but the anxieties and worries are exacerbated further at school where assumptions can be made quickly by other students and teachers. It’s important to identify symptoms of anxiety and suicide early in children’s educational lives; those with autism often aren’t able to understand most social situations which invariably leads to them feeling excluded or singled out. It can be very hard to tell whether someone is joking or bullying them which contributes to social isolation and feelings of exclusion. Unfortunately, these factors and feeling often spiral into thoughts of suicide – this is certainly something I experienced. While adapting educational services for everyone with autism, as well as other learning difficulties, is a legal requirement, we need to look at autism and suicide together since there are clear links between the two. Those on the autistic spectrum are nine times more likely to die from suicide than a neurotypical individual, and this can be chemically traced to how our brains work; generally, if our bodies are not producing enough serotonin, a lot of negativity, repeated phrases and anxiety dominate our thoughts. Autistic people – and in fact anyone who has learning disabilities – need far greater accessibility to trained psychiatrists with that understanding, because at the moment it’s far more difficult than it should be to get that help required for those on the neurodiverse scale. Because of the major hurdles to get that support, we are losing far too many on the spectrum, regardless of age, to suicide
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