Validation: Autism alone does not make us violent

Post Reply New Topic

A diagnosis of autism alone does not increase the risk of violent offending suggests a study published in the June 2017 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP).

The study analysed data from 295,734 individuals in Stockholm County, Sweden, of whom 5,739 had a diagnosis of autism. The researchers tracked these individuals for violent crime convictions between ages 15 to 27 years using records from the Swedish National Crime Register.

The team, led by researchers at University of Bristol's Population Health Science Institute and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, found that individuals diagnosed with autism initially appeared to have a higher risk of violent offending. However, this risk was significantly reduced once the presence of additional attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or conduct disorder were taken into account.

The study reported that having these co-occurring conditions, along with other, later-onset psychiatric disorders and alcohol and drug misuse, were the most important individual predictors of violent criminality in autism, not autism by itself.

Interestingly, when researchers considered individuals with ADHD or conduct disorder, an additional diagnosis of autism was actually found to reduce the risk of violent criminality, compared to individuals with ADHD or conduct disorder alone.