Suicidal Thoughts in Neurodivergent Adults: Safety Planning and Urgent Support

Suicidal thoughts can range from wishing not to wake up or wanting everything to stop to thinking about ending your life with current intent. Not everyone who has these thoughts intends to act on them, but every form deserves to be taken seriously.

Autistic adults and adults with ADHD experience higher population-level rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviour than people without these diagnoses. The risk may be especially elevated when autism and ADHD co-occur. These findings identify a need for accessible prevention and care; they do not predict what any one person will do.

Suicidal thoughts are not an inevitable part of autism, ADHD, AuDHD, depression, or burnout. They are a reason to seek support, even when you remain calm, articulate, employed, productive, or outwardly composed.

🚨 If You May Be in Immediate Danger

If you think you might act on suicidal thoughts, have started preparing, have recently attempted suicide, or cannot keep yourself safe, contact local emergency services now or go to the nearest emergency department.

If possible:

🤝 Ask someone you trust to stay with you or remain connected while help is arranged.
📱 Ask them to contact emergency or crisis support if doing so yourself feels inaccessible.
🚪 Move away from anything you might use to harm yourself and ask another person to help make the environment safer.
📄 Use an existing safety or crisis plan if you have one, but do not let completing a plan delay emergency help.

If speaking is difficult, send or show this:

“I am having suicidal thoughts and I do not feel able to keep myself safe. I need you to stay with me and help me contact urgent support.”

If suicidal thoughts are present without immediate intent, tell someone and contact a clinician or crisis service today. Find A Helpline maintains verified crisis and emotional-support services in more than 175 countries.

You do not need to establish whether the thoughts are “serious enough,” determine the cause, or finish reading this article before asking for help.

🧭 Key Points

🛟 Suicidal thoughts deserve direct attention even when there is no current plan or intent.
🚨 Current intent, preparation, a recent attempt, rapidly increasing thoughts, or inability to remain safe requires urgent help.
🧠 Autistic adults and adults with ADHD have elevated population-level risk, but statistics cannot predict an individual outcome.
💬 Asking clearly about suicide does not “put the idea into someone’s head.”
📊 A questionnaire or low-, medium-, or high-risk label cannot determine future safety.
📝 A safety plan is a collaborative sequence of specific actions, contacts, and support routes—not a promise not to die.
🧩 Communication, sensory, and executive-function adaptations may make safety planning more usable.
🔬 Autism-adapted safety plans are promising, but their effectiveness has not yet been established in a definitive trial.
🟠 Direct safety-planning research involving adults with ADHD or AuDHD is extremely limited.
🤝 A safety plan can support crisis care, but it does not replace assessment, treatment, or emergency intervention.

🌫️ What Counts as a Suicidal Thought?

Suicidal thoughts do not always begin as a detailed intention to die. They may include:

🌑 Wishing you would not wake up
🕳️ Wanting to disappear or stop existing
🛑 Feeling unable to continue living in the current circumstances
💭 Thinking about suicide without intending to act
📈 Experiencing increasingly persistent or compelling thoughts
⚠️ Developing intent, making preparations, or believing you may act

A wish not to exist can still reflect severe distress even when the person says they would never act on it. Conversely, thoughts can intensify quickly. Assessment should therefore explore what is happening now, how it has changed, and what may make safety easier or harder.

Some people experience unwanted intrusive images or phrases about death without wanting to die. Others find it difficult to distinguish an urge, an image, a hypothetical thought, a plan, and an intention. Concrete follow-up questions can help clarify the experience without assuming what it means.

🩹 Suicidal Behaviour and Self-Harm Are Not Identical

Self-harm is intentional self-injury or self-poisoning regardless of its apparent purpose. Some self-harm occurs without an intention to die, while some involves mixed, uncertain, changing, or suicidal intent.

The distinction matters clinically, but it should not become a reason to dismiss either experience. Self-harm requires compassionate assessment and appropriate physical and mental healthcare. A previous episode of self-harm or a suicide attempt is also important information when assessing current safety.

🔬 What Does the Evidence Show About Neurodivergent Adults?

The evidence is strongest for autistic people, followed by ADHD. Direct research concerning AuDHD adults remains much smaller, although large register studies have examined people with co-occurring autism and ADHD.

🧩 Autistic Adults

A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis combined 36 studies involving 48,186 autistic or possibly autistic participants without co-occurring intellectual disability. The pooled estimates were 34.2% for suicidal thoughts, 21.9% for suicide plans, and 24.3% for suicide attempts or related behaviours.

These figures should be interpreted cautiously. The studies used different definitions, measures, time periods, recruitment routes, and age groups, and statistical heterogeneity was high. Twenty-three included adult samples and 17 involved younger participants. The estimates describe varied study populations, not the likelihood that an individual autistic adult will act. Newell et al., 2023.

A nationwide Danish cohort involving more than 6.5 million people found higher recorded rates of both suicide attempts and deaths among people diagnosed with autism. More than 90% of autistic people who attempted or died by suicide had another recorded psychiatric condition. This underlines the importance of identifying and treating co-occurring conditions rather than treating autism itself as a sufficient explanation. The study was observational and based on registers, so it cannot establish individual causes. Kõlves et al., 2021.

🧠 Adults With ADHD

A 2019 meta-analysis of 57 studies found associations between ADHD and suicidal thoughts, plans, attempts, and deaths. Adjusted analyses continued to show elevated associations, suggesting that they were not explained entirely by the confounders included in the studies.

The evidence nevertheless had important limitations. Studies included both children and adults, populations and methods varied, and heterogeneity was high for several outcomes. It does not show that ADHD inevitably produces suicidal thoughts or establish one ADHD-specific causal pathway. Septier et al., 2019.

🔀 When Autism and ADHD Co-occur

A Swedish register study compared 54,168 autistic people with 270,840 matched controls. The strongest associations with suicide attempts and deaths occurred among autistic people without intellectual disability who also had ADHD. Adjustment for psychiatric conditions reduced the estimates, showing that co-occurring mental-health difficulties accounted for part of the association. Hirvikoski et al., 2020.

This is important evidence concerning co-occurring autism and ADHD, but it does not establish a distinct “AuDHD suicidality” mechanism. AuDHD is a community term for co-occurring autism and ADHD rather than a separate clinical diagnosis, and direct AuDHD-specific prevention research remains extremely limited.

⚖️ Population Risk Is Not Personal Prediction

Elevated group risk means that services, clinicians, communities, and supporters should take prevention and accessibility seriously. It does not mean that every autistic person or adult with ADHD is suicidal, nor that a diagnostic label can predict an individual crisis.

Suicidal thoughts and behaviour usually arise through multiple interacting factors. These may include:

🌧️ Depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis, trauma-related difficulties, anxiety, or another mental-health condition
🩹 Previous self-harm or a suicide attempt
🍺 Alcohol or other substances that affect judgment, distress, or impulsivity
📉 Recent loss, conflict, humiliation, financial difficulty, exclusion, or abrupt life change
🛌 Severe sleep disruption, pain, illness, or physical exhaustion
🤝 Isolation, unavailable support, or difficulty accessing care
💊 Medication effects, withdrawal, missed medication, or inadequate treatment
🔥 Burnout, overload, or an unsustainable environment occurring alongside other difficulties
⚠️ Immediate access to something the person could use to harm themselves

Most of these factors are neither necessary nor sufficient causes. Some are common among people who never attempt suicide, while a person in danger may not display an expected warning sign.

The useful question is not “Which diagnosis caused this?” but “What is happening now, what has changed, and what will make the next period safer?”

💬 Asking Directly About Suicide Is Appropriate

A common fear is that mentioning suicide will introduce the idea or increase risk. Reviews involving adults and adolescents have not found evidence that asking about suicidal thoughts causes an increase in those thoughts. Open, direct questions may instead make disclosure and support possible. Dazzi et al., 2014.

Questions can be calm and unambiguous:

💬 “Are you having thoughts about suicide?”
⏳ “Are the thoughts present now?”
📈 “Have they become more frequent, intense, or difficult to resist?”
⚠️ “Do you think you might act on them today?”
📝 “Have you started preparing to act?”
🚪 “Can you access something you might use to harm yourself?”
🩹 “Have you attempted suicide or harmed yourself recently?”
🤝 “Can you remain safe while we contact support?”

These questions are starting points, not a complete clinical assessment. A person may also need time, clarification, written communication, or one question at a time.

🧩 Communication Can Affect What Gets Disclosed

Some autistic adults may interpret vague terms literally, find abstract probability questions difficult, or need help distinguishing an unwanted thought from an intention. Some adults with ADHD may lose track during a long assessment, answer impulsively, or struggle to reconstruct a fluctuating timeline.

Possible adjustments include:

✍️ Allowing answers in writing or by message
1️⃣ Asking one clear question at a time
🔎 Defining terms such as “intent,” “preparation,” and “current”
📅 Using concrete time periods and recent examples
⏳ Allowing processing time without interpreting silence as refusal
📊 Using visual scales as conversation aids rather than predictive scores
👤 Asking how the person communicates when speech becomes inaccessible
📝 Providing the agreed conclusions and next actions in writing

A 2021 study developed the Suicidal Behaviours Questionnaire–Autism Spectrum Conditions with and for autistic adults. It may support research and help begin conversations, but its authors explicitly caution against using it alone to predict future attempts or make treatment decisions. It also does not assess current suicidal thoughts. Cassidy et al., 2021.

🧪 Why a Risk Score Cannot Decide Whether Someone Is Safe

No questionnaire, checklist, or combination of demographic risk factors can reliably predict an individual suicide.

NICE guidance on self-harm states that risk-assessment scales should not be used to predict future suicide or repeated self-harm, determine who receives treatment, or decide who is discharged. It also advises against categorizing people globally as being at low, medium, or high risk for those purposes.

Assessment should instead focus on:

🛑 Immediate and longer-term safety
🌫️ The nature and current intensity of the thoughts
📈 Recent changes in intent, preparation, access, or behaviour
📅 Previous crises, attempts, and what happened around them
🌓 Depression, mania, psychosis, substance use, trauma, and other conditions
🩺 Physical health, medication, sleep, pain, and basic care
🤝 Available support and barriers to using it
📝 A collaborative understanding of how risk increases or decreases for this person
🛟 Specific actions that can improve safety now

Someone described as “low risk” may still need meaningful support. A person’s calm presentation, denial of a stereotypical symptom, or ability to continue working cannot establish safety.

For the wider assessment process, add a link to Assessing Depression in Neurodivergent Adults: Baseline Change, Communication, and Diagnostic Overshadowing once that page is published.

🛟 What Is a Suicide Safety Plan?

A safety plan is a personalized, prioritized set of actions for recognizing and responding to an escalating suicidal crisis. It is ideally developed collaboratively with a trained professional and reviewed with the person who will use it.

A safety plan is not:

🚫 A promise or contract that someone will not attempt suicide
🚫 Proof that emergency or clinical help is unnecessary
🚫 A generic list of distractions
🚫 A form completed without the person’s involvement
🚫 A substitute for treating depression or another underlying condition
🚫 A guarantee that a crisis will not recur

A meta-analysis of six controlled studies involving 3,536 adults found that safety-planning-type interventions were associated with less subsequent suicidal behaviour than control conditions. No significant effect was found on suicidal thoughts themselves, and several included studies were not randomized or had methodological limitations. Nuij et al., 2021.

In a cohort comparison involving 1,640 adults attending US Veterans Health Administration emergency departments, safety planning combined with structured follow-up was associated with 45% fewer recorded suicidal behaviours and more treatment engagement over six months. Most participants were male veterans, and the non-randomized design prevents certainty that the intervention caused the difference. Stanley et al., 2018.

The evidence supports safety planning as one component of care—not as a stand-alone cure for suicidal distress.

📝 What Should a Safety Plan Contain?

The exact format can vary, but established plans usually include the following components.

1️⃣ Personal Warning Signs

Identify the earliest thoughts, physical changes, behaviours, situations, or patterns that suggest a crisis may be developing.

Examples should be individual and observable:

🌫️ “I repeatedly think that other people would be better without me.”
📱 “I stop answering everyone, including the person I normally contact.”
🛌 “I have barely slept for two nights and feel increasingly activated.”
🍽️ “I stop eating, taking essential medication, or accessing basic care.”
🧠 “My thinking becomes very narrow and I cannot imagine any alternative.”

A warning sign is a prompt to start the plan, not proof that an attempt will occur.

2️⃣ Strategies That Can Create Time

List a small number of actions that may reduce intensity, interrupt narrowing, or help time pass without suicidal behaviour.

These must be realistic during distress. A strategy that requires planning, travel, social performance, or multiple decisions may be inaccessible during a crisis.

Possible categories include:

🎧 A familiar sensory-regulation activity
🚶 Moving to a safer or more tolerable setting
📺 A predictable activity that can hold attention briefly
🧊 A grounding action already known to help
📝 Reading a message written during a safer period
🐾 Being near an animal when this is genuinely regulating

Internal strategies should not be the only layer. If they do not help quickly enough, the plan should move clearly to human and professional support.

3️⃣ People or Places That Reduce Isolation

Identify people or settings that can provide safe contact or distraction, even if suicide is not discussed immediately.

Record specific names, contact methods, opening hours, transport needs, and alternatives. “Talk to someone” is too vague if choosing and initiating contact become inaccessible.

4️⃣ People Who Can Provide Direct Help

Name people who can be told explicitly that suicidal thoughts are increasing.

Agree where possible on what “help” means:

📱 Staying on the phone or responding by text
🏠 Coming to stay or helping the person reach a safer place
🩺 Contacting a clinician or crisis service
🚗 Assisting with transport to urgent care
📝 Helping communicate the situation to professionals
🔐 Helping make the immediate environment safer

A supporter should not be expected to manage a dangerous crisis alone.

5️⃣ Professional and Crisis Contacts

Include current, verified details for:

🩺 The person’s clinician or mental-health team
🌙 Out-of-hours or local crisis services
☎️ A suitable crisis line or text/chat service
🏥 The nearest appropriate urgent-care location
🚨 Local emergency services

Record practical information such as what to say, accessibility needs, account details, opening hours, transport, and a backup route.

6️⃣ Making the Environment Safer

Work collaboratively to increase distance from anything the person might use to harm themselves. This may involve another person temporarily securing or managing access to an item or medication and discussing safer prescribing or dispensing with a clinician.

The safest arrangement depends on the person’s circumstances. It should preserve dignity and autonomy as far as possible while responding proportionately to current danger.

Do not independently stop essential medication. Medication-related safety should be discussed with the prescriber or urgent-care team.

7️⃣ Storage, Practice, and Review

A plan only helps if it can be found and followed.

📌 Pin it on the phone or place it somewhere predictable.
📄 Keep a paper copy if screens become inaccessible during distress.
🤝 Give a copy to agreed supporters or professionals.
▶️ Rehearse the first step during a safer period.
🔄 Review it after a crisis, major change, move, medication change, or outdated contact.
🔋 Include a reduced-capacity version containing only the first essential actions.

The creators of the Stanley–Brown Safety Planning Intervention provide further information about the standard approach.

🧩 How Can Safety Planning Be Adapted?

An adaptation should make the plan easier to understand, access, and use. It should not remove crisis contacts, professional help, or environmental-safety steps.

🔎 Make Warning Signs Concrete

“Notice when you feel worse” may be too abstract. Instead, identify personal changes in sleep, speech, movement, communication, repetitive thinking, eating, self-care, impulsivity, online behaviour, or access to usual interests.

The same behaviour can have different meanings. Solitude may be restorative on one occasion and dangerous withdrawal on another. The plan should describe what distinguishes them for this individual.

💬 Support Different Forms of Communication

A plan can include:

✍️ Prewritten messages for a supporter, clinician, or crisis service
📱 Text or chat options when phone calls are inaccessible
🗣️ A brief script for spoken contact
🪪 A crisis card explaining communication and accessibility needs
📝 Permission for a trusted person to provide agreed information
🔎 Concrete wording that avoids ambiguous emotional language

For example:

“I am having suicidal thoughts. I am currently safe for the next hour, but I need help today. Please communicate clearly, give me time to answer, and write down the next steps.”

🗂️ Reduce Executive Demands

Adults with ADHD—and many autistic adults—may understand a safety plan but struggle to initiate it under stress.

Useful adjustments may include:

1️⃣ One action per step
📌 Contacts already saved and pinned
▶️ The first message written in advance
📍 Exact locations rather than “go somewhere safe”
🔁 One backup for every unavailable person or service
🔋 A low-capacity version with fewer decisions
🤝 A supporter who can help start the next step
🔌 Practical checks such as a charged phone and accessible transport

These are plausible accessibility strategies. They have not been established as an ADHD-specific suicide-prevention intervention.

🎧 Consider Sensory and Environmental Access

A crisis service, emergency department, telephone call, or unfamiliar waiting room may create substantial sensory and communication demands. That does not make urgent care unnecessary, but preparation may make it more accessible.

A plan might identify:

🎧 Sensory aids to take
💡 Lighting or waiting-space needs
👤 Whether a supporter can accompany the person
💬 Whether written communication is easier
🚪 A less overwhelming safe location for non-emergency support
📄 A concise explanation of diagnoses, medication, and accessibility needs

Sensory regulation can reduce immediate overload for some people. It should not be presented as a treatment for suicidal thoughts or used to explain away continuing danger.

🔄 Build the Plan Iteratively

A small qualitative study involving autistic adults, family members, and service providers found that safety planning was more acceptable when it occurred with a trusted person, at an appropriate time, and through a flexible and iterative process. Visual resources, concrete suggestions, and a choice between paper and electronic formats could help. Goodwin et al., 2025.

A 2024 pilot randomized trial involved 53 autistic adults, with 49 allocated to usual care with or without an Autism Adapted Safety Plan. Retention was high and 68% of participants who completed the adapted plan reported satisfaction, but only 41% rated it as usable. The trial assessed feasibility and acceptability; it was not powered to establish whether the adapted plan prevents suicidal behaviour. Rodgers et al., 2024.

The current evidence picture is therefore:

✅ General adult evidence supports collaborative safety planning as part of suicide-prevention care.
🟡 Autism-adapted plans appear feasible and acceptable for some adults but still require effectiveness testing.
🟠 Direct ADHD-specific adaptation evidence is extremely limited.
🔴 No validated AuDHD-specific safety-planning protocol has been established.

The research team provides a downloadable Autism Adapted Safety Plan and resource pack. It should be used as a support tool rather than a replacement for professional assessment or urgent care.

🔥 Burnout and Shutdown Should Not Explain Away Suicidal Thoughts

Autistic burnout, broader neurodivergent burnout, shutdown, overload, and severe executive depletion may coexist with suicidal thoughts. Reduced demands and sensory recovery may be genuinely helpful, but improvement after rest does not establish that depression or suicide risk is absent.

A person can be burned out and depressed. They can experience shutdown while also having suicidal intent. They may also use “I want everything to stop” to describe overload, suicidal thoughts, or both.

When suicide is mentioned or suspected, ask about it directly. Do not decide that it is “only burnout” based on context, diagnosis, or the person’s usual communication style.

For broader recognition and overlap, read Neurodivergent Depression: Signs, Overlap, and Support.

🏥 What Can Professional Support Address?

A safety assessment should consider immediate danger while also investigating what may be contributing to the crisis.

Professional support may include:

🛑 Assessing current thoughts, intent, preparation, access, and recent behaviour
📝 Developing or revising a collaborative safety plan
🌧️ Assessing depression and other mental-health conditions
🌓 Checking for mania, psychosis, severe activation, or rapidly reduced sleep need
🍺 Exploring alcohol, drugs, withdrawal, and impulsivity
🩺 Reviewing physical health, pain, sleep, medication, and basic care
💊 Coordinating prescribing and medication-safety decisions
🤝 Involving chosen supporters where appropriate
📅 Arranging follow-up rather than treating the crisis as a single event
🧩 Making communication and environmental adjustments
🎯 Providing treatment for the conditions and circumstances maintaining distress

A safety plan can help someone reach care and navigate future increases in risk. It does not treat depression by itself.

For treatment options and accessibility considerations, read Therapy, Medication, and Adaptations for Depression in Autistic and ADHD Adults.

🤝 If You Are Supporting Someone

Ask directly and listen to the answer. Do not debate whether the person “really means it,” use guilt, demand a promise, or assume that calm behaviour means safety.

Helpful immediate actions include:

💬 Ask whether they are thinking about suicide and whether they may act now.
👂 Listen without trying to prove that their reasons are wrong.
🚨 Contact emergency help if they cannot remain safe, have current intent, have started preparing, or have recently acted.
🤝 Stay with them or remain connected while appropriate help is arranged, when it is safe for you to do so.
📱 Help make the call, send the message, arrange transport, or communicate accessibility needs.
🔐 Collaborate in making the environment safer without using shame or punishment.
📝 Locate their existing safety plan or help record the agreed next actions.
👥 Involve additional professional and personal support rather than accepting sole responsibility.

If immediate danger is present, safety may require contacting emergency services even when the person asks you to keep the situation secret. Continue to involve them in what is happening wherever possible.

The future D29 article, Supporting a Neurodivergent Adult With Depression, will own the complete supporter pathway.

🌤️ What Happens After the Immediate Crisis?

Surviving the most intense period is not the end of care. The next phase may involve:

📅 Prompt follow-up with the responsible service or clinician
📝 Reviewing which parts of the safety plan were accessible
🔄 Updating contacts and replacing steps that did not work
💊 Reviewing medication and treatment without making independent changes
🏠 Restoring access to food, fluids, essential medication, sleep, and shelter
🤝 Agreeing who will check in and what they should do if contact is lost
🎯 Beginning or adjusting treatment for depression or another condition
🧩 Reducing accessibility barriers that delayed help
📉 Addressing practical circumstances that continue to increase distress

A return of suicidal thoughts does not mean that the person failed or that the plan was pointless. It means that safety and treatment need to be reviewed again.

🎯 Conclusion

Suicidal thoughts in a neurodivergent adult require the same seriousness as suicidal thoughts in anyone else, alongside attention to communication, executive functioning, sensory access, co-occurring conditions, and barriers to care.

Autistic adults and adults with ADHD have elevated population-level rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviour. Large register studies suggest particularly strong associations when autism and ADHD co-occur. These findings support better prevention and clinical vigilance; they do not make suicide inevitable or allow diagnosis alone to predict individual danger.

The strongest current evidence supports direct and compassionate assessment, prompt help when safety is uncertain, collaborative safety planning, reducing access to means, follow-up, and treatment of relevant mental-health and physical conditions.

Autism-adapted safety plans are promising and have been feasible for some autistic adults, but their clinical effectiveness still requires testing. Direct ADHD- and AuDHD-specific safety-planning evidence remains extremely limited.

If suicidal thoughts are present, you do not need to wait until you can explain them perfectly. One sentence is enough to begin:

“I am having suicidal thoughts, and I need help staying safe.”

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🌑 Are Thoughts About Not Waking Up Serious?

Yes. They do not automatically mean that someone intends to attempt suicide, but they can indicate substantial distress and may change over time. Tell someone and seek professional support, especially when the thoughts are new, persistent, worsening, or accompanied by hopelessness or reduced safety.

💬 Can Asking About Suicide Make Someone More Likely to Act?

Available research has not found that asking clearly about suicide increases suicidal thoughts or behaviour. Direct questions can create an opportunity for honest disclosure and appropriate help.

🎭 Can Someone Be Suicidal While Appearing Calm or Productive?

Yes. Employment, conversation, humour, caregiving, or outward composure cannot establish low risk. Internal experience, recent changes, intent, preparation, access, and ability to remain safe need to be assessed directly.

🛟 Is a Safety Plan Enough on Its Own?

No. A safety plan is one component of care. Current intent, preparation, a recent attempt, psychosis, severe confusion, extreme activation, or inability to remain safe requires urgent professional intervention.

🔀 Is There a Specific Safety Plan for AuDHD Adults?

No AuDHD-specific suicide-prevention protocol has been established. Safety planning should use general evidence and individualized autism- and ADHD-informed accessibility while acknowledging the lack of direct research.

🧭 Where to Go Next

For depression recognition and overlap, read Neurodivergent Depression: Signs, Overlap, and Support. For evidence-based treatment and accessibility, continue to Therapy, Medication, and Adaptations for Depression in Autistic and ADHD Adults. You can also explore the Neurodivergent Depression Learning Hub.

If you may act on suicidal thoughts or cannot keep yourself safe, contact local emergency services now. For verified crisis and emotional-support options by country, visit Find A Helpline.

📚 Scientific References

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2022). Self-Harm: Assessment, Management and Preventing Recurrence.

Newell, V., Phillips, L., Jones, C., Townsend, E., Richards, C., & Cassidy, S. (2023). A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Suicidality in Autistic and Possibly Autistic People Without Co-occurring Intellectual Disability. Molecular Autism, 14, 12.

Kõlves, K., Fitzgerald, C., Nordentoft, M., Wood, S. J., & Erlangsen, A. (2021). Assessment of Suicidal Behaviors Among Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder in Denmark. JAMA Network Open, 4(1), e2033565.

Septier, M., Stordeur, C., Zhang, J., Delorme, R., & Cortese, S. (2019). Association Between Suicidal Spectrum Behaviors and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 103, 109–118.

Hirvikoski, T., Boman, M., Chen, Q., et al. (2020). Individual Risk and Familial Liability for Suicide Attempt and Suicide in Autism: A Population-Based Study. Psychological Medicine, 50(9), 1463–1474.

Dazzi, T., Gribble, R., Wessely, S., & Fear, N. T. (2014). Does Asking About Suicide and Related Behaviours Induce Suicidal Ideation? What Is the Evidence?. Psychological Medicine, 44(16), 3361–3363.

Cassidy, S. A., Bradley, L., Cogger-Ward, H., & Rodgers, J. (2021). Development and Validation of the Suicidal Behaviours Questionnaire–Autism Spectrum Conditions. Molecular Autism, 12, 46.

Nuij, C., van Ballegooijen, W., de Beurs, D., et al. (2021). Safety Planning-Type Interventions for Suicide Prevention: Meta-analysis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 219(2), 419–426.

Stanley, B., & Brown, G. K. (2012). Safety Planning Intervention: A Brief Intervention to Mitigate Suicide Risk. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 19(2), 256–264.

Stanley, B., Brown, G. K., Brenner, L. A., et al. (2018). Comparison of the Safety Planning Intervention With Follow-up Versus Usual Care of Suicidal Patients Treated in the Emergency Department. JAMA Psychiatry, 75(9), 894–900.

Rodgers, J., Cassidy, S., Pelton, M., et al. (2024). Feasibility and Acceptability of Autism Adapted Safety Plans: An External Pilot Randomised Controlled Trial. eClinicalMedicine, 73, 102662.

Goodwin, J., Gordon, I., O’Keeffe, S., et al. (2025). Adapting Safety Plans for Autistic Adults With Involvement From the Autism Community. Autism in Adulthood, 7(3), 293–302.