Adults with autism may be more likely to experience poorer health than their peers without autism. We aimed to investigate the prevalence of comorbid mental health conditions and physical disabilities in a whole country population of adults aged 25+ with and without reported autism.
We analysed Scotland’s Census, 2011 data, including 6,649/3,746,584 adults aged 25+ reported to have autism. We investigated the prevalence of six comorbidities: deafness or partial hearing loss, blindness or partial sight loss, intellectual disabilities, mental health conditions, physical disability and other condition. We then calculated odds ratio (95% CI) of autism predicting these comorbidities, adjusted for age and gender; and odds ratio for age and gender in predicting comorbidities within the population with reported autism.
Comorbidities were common among adults with autism: deafness/hearing loss-14.1%; blindness/sight loss-12.1%; intellectual disabilities-29.4%; mental health conditions-33.0%; physical disability-24.0%; other condition-34.1%. Autism statistically predicted all of the conditions, with odds ratio of 3.3 (95% CI 3.1 to 3.6) for deafness or partial hearing loss, 8.5 (95% CI 7.9 to 9.2) for blindness or partial sight loss, 94.6 (95% CI 89.4 to 100.0) for intellectual disabilities, 8.6 (95% CI 8.2 to 9.1) for mental health conditions, 6.2 (95% CI 5.8 to 6.6) for physical disability and 2.6 (95% CI 2.5 to 2.8) for other condition. Contrary to findings within the general population, female gender predicted higher likelihood of all conditions within the population with reported autism, including intellectual disabilities.
Clinicians need heightened awareness of comorbidities in adults with autism to improve detection and suitable care, especially given the added complexity of assessment in this population and the fact that hearing and visual impairments may cause additional difficulties with reciprocal communication which are also a feature of autism; hence, posing further challenges in assessment.
The published article, along with a presentation and easy read summary about this research can be viewed by selecting the links below.
Project information last updated 7th September 2020.
Laura is a Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of Glasgow, and an affiliate of the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory, having joined the team in 2015. With the Observatory, Laura was involved in projects looking at the health of people with learning disabilities in a number of large data-sets, including primary health care records, Scotland's 2011 Census and health records of people born with Down Syndrome in Scotland over a 25 year period. Laura studied Psychology and has extensive experience of working with people with learning disabilities in her previous roles, for example, as a Befriender, a Learning Assistant and an Assistant Psychologist. Read more about Laura at the link below
Anna set up the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory with funding from the Scottish Government. She wants the Observatory to make Scotland fairer and healthier for people with learning disabilities and their families, by: Finding out the health problems people have Finding out how good or bad health care is Telling people about health and health care problems Finding ways to make health and health care better Checking if health gets better or worse over time Helping the Scottish Government, and staff who provide health and social services, to get it right for people with learning disabilities Anna is a doctor. She has done a lot of studies on the health of people with learning disabilities. Anna’s full name is Professor Sally-Ann Cooper.
Ewelina is an Affiliate Associate Researcher with the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory. Ewelina's work with the Observatory focused around health inequalities and the health needs of people with autism. She is now based at the University of Edinburgh School as a Lecturer in Health Futures at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and School of Health in Social Science.
Angela was formerly the Director for Policy and Impact for the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory and remains an affiliate team member, having moved in 2024 to work with the Scottish Government leading the development of annual health checks and learning disabilities data. Angela is interested in how evidence is used in policy making and was involved in many projects at the Observatory. These included: Understanding the impact of Covid-19 on people with learning disabilities The Research Voices Project Helping to set up the SPIRE learning disabilities data project Analysing information about drug prescribing for people with learning disabilities
