Are Aspies prone to suicide?

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I lost a good aspie friend to suicide, plus another two who went to the same special school as I did. Its the stigma of mental illness thats a problem more than anything. If someone breaks a leg or ends up in a wheelchair for life, they'll get sympathy willy-nilly but for the likes of us its the usual patronizing "Oh, chin up" or "Pull yourself together" stuff. Learning disability is probably a bigger issue than physical disability and part of it is the stigma.

Can't speak for everyone else. I can tell you my experiences. I think about suicide when my AS is particularly bad. I'm more NT-like on most days, and every once in a while I kind of degenerate into a depressed sulking anti social person with lots of negative thoughts. (Why that happens is a discussion for some other time.) Anyway while I'm like that I think of suicide frequently, especially when I'm overwhelmed with unwanted sensory inputs, or overwhelmed with attention or requests from other people. I also know that I would never actually commit suicide. But I do think about it on my bad days, and then just as quickly dismiss the thought as nonsense because I know I'll get better again.

bhetti,

Check out all of the citations; it's a valid source (I know of two doctors who bring it up on their computer during sessions too). And I also provided the link, if you so happen to go back and read.

Anyway, it says the same thing, and it's not out of context (I fail to see what your point is too):

I read somewhere (I can't remember where, so don't ask) that it's undiagnosed aspies that are more likely to kill themselves than those who are diagnosed, but on the whole it seems that those with AS are more prone to get depression regardless of whether or not they are diagnosed. Also, because more males than females are diagnosed with AS and more males than females successfully kill themselves, it would make the "Aspies are more prone to suicide" statement stronger. Still though, that's only what the statistics say. I'm just the "messenger".

I was skimming thru this thread and wondered if Emedicine does, in fact, say "unexpected suicides could be undiagnosed AS" (more or less) so I did a google search using the keywords "unexpected suicide asperger's emedicine" and found this link:

http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cach ... l=en&gl=us

I haven't read the article but according to google, it does say that unexpected suicides are suspected to be undiagnosed Asperger's.

Anxiety and Depression is common in aspies so yea.

I agree. Poeple with AS are at a higher risk of developing secomndary disorders like depression than NTs are, so it's sadly inevitable that some of these cases will end in suicide - especially if misdiagnosed.

As a sad postscript, an aspie aquantance of mine disappeared from his London flat almost a year ago and hasn't been since. Admittedly, he may just have gone AWOL in another country - he's done that before and returned - but the fact that he left the lights turned on in his home before going missing doesn't fill me with optimism.

Going by the level I've enjoyed life and that thoughts of suicide are always in the background and (fairly rarely) in the fore ground as well, I suspect suicide and autism/AS are fairly linked.

I accept that life might change, but if it does not then there will come a time when the chances have basically run out. Complete abandoment of hope is unlikely to lie closer than 15 to 20 years away, but it is ever creeping closer.

Nothing personal, but I have about heard enough.

Are Aspies prone to suicide?

Given the fact most Aspies are human,

Then Yes, most Aspies are Prone to human challenges.

Additional information - or viewpoints - regarding this case from the Huffington Post, August 1:

Asperger's Syndrome is characterized in part by obsessive and compulsive behavior and the failure of the sufferer to empathize with others' emotions, including distress. Much has been written about Gary McKinnon -- the UFO-fanatical British hacker who allegedly caused $500,000 worth of damage to Pentagon and NASA computer systems and caused a major breach of security -- and to his Asperger's. But you have to wonder whether he is the most acute case in this whole sorry tale.

Obsessive and compulsive behavior? An absence of empathy? It sounds like the British and American governments are the ones with the far more serious case of Asperger's than Mr McKinnon.

As the doctor who diagnosed him, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, has said: "We should be thinking about this [the hacking] as the activity of somebody with a disability rather than a criminal activity."[...]