Mental health: autism

Autism or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder which affects communication and interaction. Drawing on data from the Scottish Census 2011:

13,666 (0.6%) adults aged 16-64 years and 698 (0.1%) adults aged 65 years and over in Scotland were known to have autism
17,348 (1.9%) children aged 0-15 years were known to have autism.

For information on problems and issues around autism, see the Public Health Institute for Scotland's (2001) needs assessment report on Autistic Spectrum Disorders (2.2MB) and the Medical Research Council's (2001) review of Autism research: epidemiology and causes (412kB). Scottish Autism has also published a number of relevant reports.

The Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory has been tasked by the Scottish Government to generate evidence and build understanding of the causes of poor health and health inequalities experienced by people with autism. The Observatory is conducting multiple research projects related to autism, including COVID-19 in autistic people.

Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.