SIB and Suicide Ideation

• 30% of autistics have Self-Injurious Behaviors (Soke et al., 2016)

SIB in autism could in fact be a manifestation of psychological trauma and indicative of underlying suicide ideation or maybe a substitute for suicide itself. 

I had an autistic friend who attempted suicide first by swallowing the contents of an entire bottle of melatonin pills and then a second time by drinking a whole bottle of his dad's whiskey in his home. He had to have his stomach pumped in ER both times. All while he was a teen. 

Ironically, the very act of suicide as such, requires a lot of motor skills, executive functioning and motor planning. So maybe SIB's are the only tools available for some autistics as an outlet for built up trauma, stress or distress from other underlying issues. Perhaps it's not thought of as suicide ideation when the autistic does not have spoken language to express it as such, but don't actions speak louder than words. Where SIB's become a substitute or prologue to suicide ideation. 

Isn't this worth finding REAL solutions to, through autism research.

Currently there is little to no support for autistics engaging in SIB or families who are trying to support those autistics. 

Medication is currently seen as the only resort. And what are these drugs. All we have is Big Pharma recycling/ rebranding meds made in the 1950s. Minor changes in chemical drug structure allows for re-patenting and maintaining the exorbitant high prices/profits. I once heard Dr Antonio Hardan of Stanford mention that these drugs don't work the same way in autistics as in the general population - why then are we being over medicated from childhood with drugs that don't work for us. 

There is a paucity of crisis centers resources or supports available to autistics with SIB's/aggression and their families. Most families don't know who to approach; it's like they are on an island. The autistic's life often becomes a revolving door of stays in hospital psychiatric wards (like a few of my friends) and then sent promptly back to their families after their stay. Why revolving? - because they are on meds which have limited effectiveness in the first place. And many get sent off to live in group homes or residential facilities as the family can no longer cope living from crisis to crisis (irony is that many group homes don't want autistics with behaviors) . If this is the state of the family, imagine the state of the autistic themselves who often have much more limited communication - nothing to do with speaking ability here, think - how communicative is any person, disabled or not, in times of distress (like you choke up when crying!!). 

The limited number of meds available to us means along with being on meds, often since childhood, means many of us build tolerance to many of these drugs which further decrease their effectiveness. So even the ones that "kinda" worked don't work anymore. We are all going to live to 80 at least. What are we gonna do when we are in our 30s, 40s, 60s, 70s, 80s if nothing works. 

We need research done to develop therapeutics that will actually work for us? And given autism is a spectrum, we need to get down to a physiological level so that precision therapeutics are developed so we can reduce side effects. 

At the end of the day we also need to remember that psychotropic drugs only help to manage symptoms or dampen behavioral symptoms. So what is also needed is biomedical research into underlying issues at a physiological level that translate into affordable mainstream healthcare - its that research into gut issues, sleep issues, auto-immune issues, neuro-inflammation, movement issues etc - these are real issues that many autistics are facing - cuz if we get to the bottom of those, maybe we can reduce SIB by that much.