Community ideas for suicide prevention

Paper: “Community priorities for preventing suicide in autistic people: an approach to guide policy and practice"

This paper was published in 2026, in the journal Autism in Adulthood.

The research was initiated, promoted and supported by charity Autism Action, whose number one priority is suicide prevention in autistic people. The authors were Dr Rachel Moseley, Dr Tanya Procyshyn, Ms Tanatswa Chikaura, Dr Sarah Marsden, Dr Tracey Parsons, Dr Sarah Cassidy, Dr Carrie Allison, Dr Mirabel Pelton, Dr Elizabeth Weir, Mr David Crichton, Professor David Mosse, Professor Jacqui Rodgers, Dr Ian Hall, Dr Lewis Owens, Mr Jon Cheyette, Ms Holly Hodges, Dr Darren Hedley, and Professor Simon Baron-Cohen (author links will open in separate tabs).

You can click HERE to download this paper.

Please note that the paper may be triggering: it includes some distressing descriptions of suicidal thoughts and the experiences which led to them. Please take care of yourself; you may decide not to read it right now if you are in a vulnerable state.

Keep reading to see a less-detailed plain English summary, or you can watch my explanatory video!

Why is this an important issue?

Suicide is a leading cause of death for autistic people, and many more live with distressing, intrusive suicidal thoughts.

Research has focused on understanding why autistic people are at higher risk. There is virtually no research exploring how suicidal thoughts, suicidal behaviours and suicide deaths can be prevented in autistic people - and very few studies that ask autistic people what they think about this. What actions do autistic people and those close to them (their supporters/allies) think should be the top priority for policy-makers and clinicians?

Here is a video summary of this paper. You can open it up to large screen, and turn captions on and off by clicking the 'CC' button. (Please ignore my speech impediment in places!)

What was the purpose of this study, and what did the researchers do?

We wanted to hear autistic people's ideas and priorities for ways to reduce or prevent suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and suicide deaths in autistic people. We also wanted to hear ideas and priorities from those who support/advocate for an autistic person (their supporters/allies).

Working with the charity Autism Action and their advisory panel of autistic people and family members of autistic people, we designed a two-phase study:

Altogether, across both phases of our survey, 3962 autistic people took part. We also had 627 people (called 'supporters/allies') who either currently supported/advocated for an autistic person, and/or had been bereaved by the suicide of an autistic person. Some supporters/allies were autistic themselves! Most participants (95%) were from the UK.

We had so many findings from this two-phase study that we published several papers: one on the suicidal experiences of Phase 1 participants, and one on their experiences of trying to seek help (pages will open in new windows).

Autistic people had so much to say about suicide prevention that we split these findings into two papers:

Phase 1: The ideas-gathering stage

We used an online survey to learn

about autistic people's suicide-related experiences. We asked participants to

write in short and/or long-term ideas for how suicide could be prevented.

We analysed 3373 suggestions from Phase 1 participants. We distilled these into 63 specific ideas, and built them into:

Phase 2: The ranking stage

In a second online survey, we asked a separate, larger group of participants to rank the ideas generated by Phase 1 participants: essentially, to select their favourites. We also gave them the opportunity to tell us their own ideas about suicide prevention.

The paper you're reading about here will tell you about the ideas that Phase 1 participants had for suicide prevention. It will also tell you which of these were selected as priorities by Phase 2 participants.

In another paper, we gave Phase 2 participants the opportunity to have their own say about suicide prevention (coming soon).

Here is a summary of the results from both phases.

Phase 1: The ideas-gathering stage

Participants wrote their ideas for suicide prevention into our online survey. A small team of the researchers (3/4 neurodivergent) analysed the ideas, looking for themes that were similar across differently-worded ideas. Some were ideas to help autistic people in crisis right now, while others were about preventing people from developing suicidal thoughts in the longer-term. Here are the ten most common kinds of ideas from autistic people.

1. Professionals (especially in healthcare) need to be trained to understand suicidality, trauma,

burnout and mental health issues in autistic people

"Being taken seriously and being validated by others especially as an autistic woman. Not having my concerns and feelings passed off just as anxiety" (Participant quote)

2. We need autism-specific professionals, services, interventions and tools

"help needs to be delivered by autism specialists. it can’t be generic as precious time is wasted" (Participant quote)

3. We must tackle societal ignorance, prejudice and discrimination related to autism, mental

health and suicide

"Make society more accessible to autistic people. Jobs that don’t make us miserable. Education for non autistic people so we don’t scare them or anger them" (Participant quote)

4. Make existing services and support faster and easier to access, with better continuity of care

and non-speaking ways to access help.

"Make it easy for the person to seek help. If they get to this point they are usually beyond being able to help themselves" (Participant quote)

5. Focus on improving autism assessment and diagnosis across the lifespan.

"Modernisation of autism assessment process that isn’t as stressful and low key dehumanising" (Participant quote)

6. Facilitate peer support: in-person, remotely, one-on-one mentoring or peer mental health support.

"Some way to speak to other neurodivergent people who feel or have felt how I feel would be helpful, as I find most of the support seems targeted at NTs, and doesn't really help me" (Participant quote)

7. Focus on improving mental health with continuous, preventative support, including help with

self-esteem and emotions.

"Support needs to be available earlier and, as it is a common feeling not to want to burden others with problems, support needs to be ongoing until proven not needed, rather than reapplied for" (Participant quote)

8. Develop strategies for coping with suicidal thoughts and improving wellbeing.

"By encouraging autistic people to do the things they love" (Participant quote)

9. Provide social support.

We looked for common 'themes' (i.e. messages or ideas) in participants' free-text responses to the question about what factors contributed to their suicidal thoughts and feelings. These are the themes we identified; some of them have subthemes (marked by roman numerals) and sub-subthemes (marked by letter numerals). To read participants' words in more detail, you can download the paper above.

In Theme 1, people linked suicidal thoughts to aspects of being autistic, like sensory, social and emotional overload, the exhaustion of masking, having 'sticky', black and white thoughts, and struggling to understand the world. They also linked suicide to the stress of being autistic generally, and to other health conditions and neurodivergence.

In Theme 3, people talked about some of the feelings underpinning suicidal thoughts. These included fears of the future (i); feeling lonely, alone, and disconnected from others (ii); feeling worthless and a burden to others (iii); lacking purpose (iv); and feeling trapped in overwhelming circumstances (v). Often, these mental states were linked with aspects of being autistic (Theme 1), with being undiagnosed (Theme 4), and/or with unpleasant life events (Theme 2).

In Theme 4, people talked about how being undiagnosed autistic had led to suicidal feelings. Often, being undiagnosed led to the feelings described in Theme 3, and/or led to some of the distressing life events of Theme 2. Being undiagnosed could also worsen some of the difficult aspects of being autistic described in Theme 1. As such, being undiagnosed contributed to suicidal thoughts in many ways.

In Theme 2, people talked about distressing life events that often gave rise to the feelings of Theme 3. These included major life changes, including biological transitions and life transitions (i); different forms of trauma, abuse or assault (ii); chronic (i.e. long-lasting) stress, such as everyday strains and global or national concerns out of your control (iii); and the stress of living in a society which does not understand or respect autistic people (iv). Within this last subtheme, participants talked about the stress of having insufficient support, and being victimised by people in positions of authority or responsibility (e.g. doctors).

Part 2: The contributing factors to suicide differed between autistic people of different genders and ages

In contrast to men, autistic women and trans/gender-divergent participants highlighted

Academic difficulties and stress
Bullying
Difficulties with friends/family
Hopelessness
Being unable to access support
Physical health issues
Mental health issues
Past trauma
Loneliness (women specifically)
Worthlessness and feelings of failure (women specifically)
Loss (women specifically)
Difficulties accepting and coming out in relation to gender and/or sexuality (trans/gender-divergent participants specifically)

Men were more likely to highlight difficulties in romantic relationships and unrequited love.

Differences across age groups showed that younger participants were more affected by academic stress and gender-related challenges, and older participants were more affected by job difficulties, difficulties in romantic relationships, financial problems, legal problems, housing problems, physical health problems, and past trauma.

Autistic people in the 26-40 age group were more strongly affected by hopelessness.

On the left, you can see differences in how autistic men, women and transgender/gender-divergent or gender-questioning participants rated the importance of pre-entered factors: robust differences are marked by asterisks. On the right, you can see differences between autistic people of different age groups, with asterisks marking out robust differences.

We can link some of these findings to what other studies have told us:

Autistic women and sex/gender minorities are more likely to experience victimisation, abuse, mental and physical illness, and find it harder to access help

Autistic women are sometimes found to be more lonely, while struggling to manage friend/family relationships. Autistic sex/gender minorities are likely to experience additional challenges in their relationships

Support for autistic people drops as they go into adulthood, while challenges with employment and independence increase: hence greater hopelessness in the 26-40 age group.

The lack of differences in bullying and loneliness, across age groups, is consistent with the fact that these are problems for autistic people throughout their lives.

Part 3: We could predict autistic people's lifetime experience with suicide from how they rated these pre-entered contributing factors

We looked to see whether people's importance ratings for each pre-entered factor could predict which group they belonged to: those who had experienced only passing thoughts of suicide, those who had experienced more prolonged and intense suicide ideation, those who had made a suicide plan, and those who had attempted suicide.

People who had attempted suicide were marked out by having rated 'past trauma' and 'being unable to access help' as more important than any other group.

Rating 'Bullying, abuse, harassment or assault' as very important was characteristic of autistic people who had made suicide plans and those who had attempted suicide.

Where contributing factors failed to differentiate between people with different degrees of experience with suicide, it means that these factors affected everyone, regardless of their degree of experience with suicide. 'Mental illness' and 'hopelessness', for instance, were rated as less important by people with only passing thoughts of suicide, but were equally important for people with suicidal thoughts, suicide plans, and suicide attempts. That 'past trauma', 'being unable to access help' and 'bullying...' distinguished people with greater degrees of experience with suicide suggests that these factors might indicate who moves from thinking about suicide to acting on those thoughts. This could help us intervene to save lives.

What are potential weaknesses in the study?

We measured autistic people's perception of contributing factors as they were reflecting back on their lives. Because this study didn't measure actual exposure to these contributing factors, we can't be sure that these factors really were associated with later suicidal thoughts and behaviour. For instance, we can't tell if autistic people who rated 'bullying' as unimportant never experienced it, were less distressed by the experience, and/or perceived other factors as more important. This means we can't be totally sure that bullying does predict later suicidal behaviour.

Our study was very specific to the UK, and our autistic participants were not representative of autistic people with learning disabilities and higher support needs, or autistic people of colour, who might face additional barriers to healthcare.

Our comparisons were a bit unbalanced, since we had more autistic women than men and trans/gender-divergent individuals. As such, our findings might not generalise to all autistic men, or to people with specific transgender or gender-divergent identities.

Very importantly, there are some autistic people who experience suicidality but choose not to participate in online surveys or to seek help - we don't know anything about these individuals, or how many autistic people die by suicide without ever having sought help.

How will these findings help autistic adults now or in the future?

Our findings give us a window into the kind of thoughts and feelings which underpin suicidal behaviour in autistic people, and the kinds of experiences that give rise to those thoughts and feelings. This should help clinicians to understand the autistic people they work with, and better understand how to help.

Our findings suggest that the risk factors for suicide in autistic people differ by gender. This means that approaches to preventing suicide also need to be gender-sensitive.

Our findings suggest that certain life experiences might be especially associated with suicide risk: namely 'bullying, abuse, harassment, and assault', 'past trauma', and 'being unable to access help'. This highlights that more needs to be done to protect autistic people from victimisation and ensure they are listened to and can access help when they need it.

Thank you for reading!

If you found this interesting, you may like to read:

“'I did not think they could help me': UK-based autistic adults’ reasons for not seeking public healthcare when experiencing suicidality" (2025)

"Lifetime stressor exposure is related to suicidality in autistic adults: A multinational study" (2025)

"The relevance of the interpersonal theory of suicide for predicting past-year and lifetime suicidality in autistic adults" (2022)

If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or your mental health, please look at the resources page in case there is something helpful there for you.