Reported childhood prevalence of autism varies considerably between studies and over time, and general health status has been little investigated. We aimed to investigate contemporary prevalence of reported autism by age, and general health status of children and young people with and without autism.
Whole country data were drawn from Scotland’s Census, 2011. We calculated the number and percentage of children and young people reported to have autism. We then calculated and compared the frequencies of health status in children and young people with and without autism. We subsequently used logistic regressions to calculate odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) of autism predicting poor general health in the whole population, adjusted for age and gender, and odds ratio (95% CI) of age and gender predicting poor general health within the population with reported autism.
Autism was reported for 17,348/916,331 (1.9%) children aged 0–15, and 7,715/632,488 (1.2%) young people aged 16–24. The rate increased to age 11 in boys and age 10 in girls, reflecting age at diagnosis. Prevalence was 2.8% at age 10 (4.4% for boys; 1.1% for girls), and 2.9% at age 11 (4.5% for boys; 1.1% for girls). 22.0% of children and 25.5% of young people with autism reported poor health, compared with 2.0% and 4.4% without autism. Autism had an odds ratio of 11.3 (95% CI 11.0 to 11.7) in predicting poor health. Autistic females had poorer health than autistic males, with odds ratio for female gender reported at 1.6 (95% CI 1.5 to 1.8).
Accurate information on the proportion of autistic children and their health status is essential to plan appropriate prevention and intervention measures and provide resources for those who may put demand on services designed for autistic people.
Project information last updated 7th September 2020.
Project Lead: Ewelina Rydzewska-Fazekas
Research Team: Laura Anne Hughes-McCormack, Christopher Gillberg, Angela Henderson, Cecilia MacIntyre, Julie Rintoul, Sally-Ann Cooper
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
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.
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.
