Is this really true about Autistic people?

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Is it true that autistics have a much shorter life expecantcy?

Where did you hear that? Did one of the really supportive in your life say that or did you get it from a reputable source?

here is where i found the info from

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Life-Expe ... id=4106884

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_l ... ith_autism

http://www.lifespan.org/adam/healthillu ... 01526.html

There's no information in those links at all... The life expectancy is not affected by autism itself, but by conditions that can occur with it. Autism affects the thought processes of the brain. It doesn't directly affect one's health.

What other conditons that occur with autisim might effect ones life expectancy?

Wiki answers is not reliable. Basically, any jack wad can post an opinion. If you read the ezine one, you would see that it doesn't really state that autistics have lower life expectancies. The life span page doesn't say anything either.

What's got you in an uproar?

Well some people have epilepsy along with autism, and the epilepsy can cause head trauma and head trauma can result in brain damage. But still, that's indirect and not specific to autism. Then there's depression and anxiety and they can affect someone's ability to look after themselves, i.e. to eat and sleep and generally mind their health, and then if a person deals with these for a long time, the resulting long-term poor health will of course contribute to lower life expectancy. Again, very indirect and not really related to the autism itself. There are other conditions too, can't think of them all right now... But anyway, there's no evidence of short life expectancy caused by autism.

Nothings got me an uproar today i was just curious about the subject of autisim and life expectancy thats all.

Left handed people have a shorter life expectancy because they are more prone to fatal accidents when dealing with a right hand oriented world. If anyone is speculating on shorter life expectancies in autism I'd suspect it was something along those lines.

Ezine Articles is garbage, too. I've run into them before. They're a content farm where people post junk articles to clog up search engines to drive traffic away from real articles.

I have done a lot of research on adults with Asperger's Syndrome. All I can say is there's not much to say. Almost all research is concentrated on children, teens, and young adults. Once you get past college age, there's almost zero information out there. One thing I hate about psychology research is almost all the information is locked behind paywalls on the Internet, so there very well could be studies on life expectancy that are not available to the general public. If so, these have not filtered down into any of the books I have been able to find. Because AS is so new, I don't expect much information has been gathered about cause of death. Besides, most people over 30 with AS are probably undiagnosed, so even if there were stats like this, they'd be questionable.

Given the nature of Asperger's Syndrome, since it doesn't have anything in particular to do with the body's basic physiology, any decrease in life expectancy would be from other complications, like suicide or sensory perception issues that cause an early fatality (perhaps such as operating some kind of machinery). Since NTs can combine recklessness with stupidity and achieve the same sort of bad outcomes, I would not expect the life expectancy of AS to be significantly different from the overall population. If anything, I would imagine people with AS to be safer since they probably wouldn't engage in reckless behavior like drinking and driving, and tend to follow rules scrupulously like safety guidelines.

Oh no, another stereotype.

About that i have read in a pair of italian sites about autism that autism doesn't affect life expecantcy! It has nothing to do with health.