Autistic women x2 likely toattempt suicide than autistic men

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https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/autis ... t-suicide/

So sad. I wish I had known, then I would have felt more "normal" in my abnormality. I had the typical undiagnosed-ASD awful college experience. As I wrote in another post, women tend to internalize. My severe angst and self-harm continued into my late 20s until I got psychiatric and therapeutic support.

I wonder how men and women with ASD compare to the general population for actually succeeding at suicide. Generically speaking, women attempt more often but men succeed more often due, I wonder if that pattern holds as well as how attempts vs success compares between folks with ASD and without.

This was also what I thought. I would love to learn the numbers.

Except men kill them selves way more then women.

Poor girls--they mask better than men do, but appear to suffer for it.

Men are better at killing themselves (it could hardly be called success) usually because they tend to use guns and other weapons a lot. Women often overdose or use knives.

I wouldn't recommend any of them. Life is too precious, sacred even, to snuff out due to circumstance.

Perhaps you haven't dealt with being suicidal for an extended period. Life is just that period of suffering in between not existing and not existing.

Women attempt more often, men succeed more often when they try.

i wonder how many "passive suicides" occur with females. by passive, i mean things like not taking care of oneself, overeating, eating the wrong things, being "accident-prone," doing dangerous things for no good reason, et al.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Also I don't know how common it is these days, but in old stories women tended to end their lives by drowning, especially unwed pregnant women.

That's the thing - I know life is precious and that I am a thermodynamic miracle a la Dr. Manhattan, I know I have things I enjoy doing, I know I have a family that would be devastated if I died. But that horrific guilt of keeping yourself alive despite being totally miserable is incredibly heavy. It takes a toll. I would love nothing more than just to be content with being alive, I would love if if I didn't have to fight so hard on a daily basis just to exist. That's the reality of mental illness I think people don't understand sometimes. If I had a physical disability that was causing me immense amounts of pain everyday I think people would understand if I just decided I didn't want to go through it anymore. That pain is more invisible with mental illness and seemingly more abstract. If I could take a pill that would cure me, I would in a heartbeat.

It's also more expensive and time consuming to have mental illness which doesn't help. Like... I already have a hard time doing basic tasks but I have to add in going to a psychiatrist, making sure I get my medication, making sure I go to regular therapy appointments that cost quite a bit of money, calming myself down when I'm panicky, trying to practice the things I am told will help me, playing medication roulette, etc. It's exhausting.

Disclaimer: I am not currently suicidal but have been on/off throughout my life.

Very well said.

As noted in this thread misunderstanding and mistreatment by the medical system.

Could be peaches to pears.

Maybe women have to be MORE autistic then their male counterparts in order to be recognized as being autistic in the first place. Have to stand out more. The system does seem to miss females.

So in comparing the two groups you're comparing minorly impaired men to majorly impaired women.

Pshaw! not an extended period, I hope. Only a quarter of all living days, the formative years of adolescence, and only recently have I managed to evict the Angel of Death from the front-parlor of my soul. I've been doing this:

Surviving the days I distrusted family so much I hid iron bars behind the furniture, figured out how to block the door to my room, and made plans to run away disabling the telephone and the automobile to defy pursuit,

the day I survived an attempted murder by some random guy

time and time again I understood what psychological manipulation actually looks like in myself and in other people, how it warps you, twists you, even, into something entirely false: how I learned to trust in free will, especially my own, and in right and wrong.

Living with the day I ended up vomiting in Midnight Mass on Christmas Day because of stress.

"You live in the past! You're fake! I want my son back!" Thanks a million, Dad.

The days I scaled balconies in the dead of night just to find some fun, some relief.

The times people called me out for "Resting B---h Face" when I was trying to see them.

The state of mind that makes you blow your nose on your socks because you don't want to trouble them for a tissue and you can't find a handkerchief anywhere.

How about all the times you try to create things and hear "artists are sissies," "you live in a fantasy world and that's evil," "real men don't (wholesome activity)."

Emotions other than rage and a jovial bonhomie were considered suspect.

And one day I took my shotgun and looked down the barrel and pulled the trigger just to hear the click, (it wasn't loaded) as a way of acting out, seeking some temporary relief. If I weren't Catholic I would have loaded it before I pulled the trigger.

Days I got yelled at for being up at midnight reading Shakespeare's [I]Hamlet.

Days I learned to hide anything I really enjoyed.

Days I tried to go to my mother about the emotional abuse (though I knew not what to call it) and was told "you're trying to drive a wedge in your family because you hate your father."

The day I called out my father on his political hysterics and he pinned me to the back wall of the bathroom as I was going in to get a shower. He later manipulated me into sympathizing with his sorry @$$ when I went to go get a pocket knife because I didn't know if he was still volatile...because he'd lost the country he grew up with, boo-hoo-hoo. No, I don't support that decision either, but I think America is better served by rational citizens, by conservatives instead of reactionaries. (he won't hear a word to this day about the arguments for or against global warming, preferring the tactics of the ostrich.)

The words I heard when I left the house for the first time, at the age of seventeen: "It's three in the morning and you're still up? You're an idiot!" What a way to remember my family.

The constant pressure from friends & family to stop "hoarding" antiques (when the rest of the house is full of their miscellanea) because it's "impractical." Excuse me? I'd live like a 24/7 reenactment if I had a chance, partly as a rebellion and partly to seek a sensory space.

The day I refused to join in a screening of The Shawshank Redemption because of some scenes in it and got told "you need to quit being so rigid with this morality stuff." Friend, I was in training to become a Catholic priest at that time, and would like to know whether we are allowed preferences that don't include prison buggery in the photoplays. Perhaps we could watch something else? Or perhaps have a normal conversation for a change?

I regret the sentence fragments and the wall of text. Perhaps they will serve for some notice that even fairly jolly people can have had a dark time, or quite a bit of dark time, in their life.

Depression warps the mental faculties and I would not think that anupme who acts on a decision in a depressed state is acting logically. They need healing, not to be aided and abetted.
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Ah, and the luxury of creative definitions, too. Life is actually "the condition that distinguishes active animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, functional activity, and continual change preceding death." (Oxford English Dictionary.) I think it's worth living for its own sake.

I really do like your logic. Pardon the ignorance here, but is there a way to tell how autistic someone is?