Study uncovers ‘alarming’ rate of suicidal thoughts, behaviors in young children with autism
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Key takeaways:
- Suicidal thoughts and behaviors among children with autism may begin earlier than previously observed.
- Survey results indicate that onset occurs younger than age 8 years for many.
A survey of caregivers revealed an “unexpectedly high frequency” of suicidal thoughts and behaviors among children with autism aged 8 years or younger, researchers reported in JAMA Pediatrics.
The results suggest an earlier onset of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) than has previously been observed among children with autism, the researchers said.
“The initial purpose of this study was to better understand how children and adolescents with autism experience suicidal thinking,” Benjamin J. Schindel, MD, MPH, a neurodevelopmental medicine fellow at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, told Healio. “When we discovered how young so many of the children were when they began having such thoughts, that shifted the urgency of the research and became the primary focus of the forthcoming manuscript.”
Schindel and colleagues studied data from the Interactive Autism Network, an international autism registry that closed in 2019. From May to October 2017, network distributed a survey called the Mental Health and Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire to caregivers of individuals with autism aged between 8 and 25 years old. The caregivers provided information about the presence and age of onset of STBs.
Approximately 55,000 families participated in the survey, including 21,000 children and 7,500 adults with autism. Schindel and colleagues included responses from 968 caregivers of children with autism aged 8 to 17 years with at least one response to a question about STBs.
“The alarming and surprising finding was uncovered when we analyzed the age of onset of STB,” Schindel said.
In all, the lifetime incidence of STB among all children was 40.5% for wanting to die, 19.3% for wanting to end their own life and 7.4% for having a suicide plan. Among those who responded affirmatively to these questions, onset at age 8 years or younger was reported in 36.2%, 35.3% and 18.1% of children, respectively, making it the most common age of onset for STBs.
“This was certainly surprising, but I would say our surprise was somewhat tempered by the fact that [autism] and other neurodevelopmental disabilities seem to have some unique associations with STB, and we are learning more and more about this from ongoing research,” Schindel said. “This points to the need to prioritize inclusive practices in future research on suicide and mental health.”
Schindel said many questions remain unanswered.
“Do expressions of suicidal thoughts turn into suicidal behaviors in the same way that they do in individuals with disabilities?” Schindel said. “What are the other factors that might predict STB in individuals with developmental disabilities like [autism]? We need to know about these so that we can prevent these individuals from taking their own lives, and we need to develop tools to identify and address suicide in individuals with disabilities in a way that is inclusive, sensitive, and impactful.”
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