People with Asperger's are much more likely to have suicidal thoughts and act upon them. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(14)70

People with Asperger's are much more likely to have suicidal thoughts and act upon them. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(14)70248-2/abstract An obsessive personality can lead to an individual working 80 hour weeks - not by choice, but by default. They literally don't know any better and are not necessarily competent to make a conscious decision not to this. I've worked with two suicides, both of which would have scored as Asperger's (a diagnosis in retrospect) and two others that completely broke down from the stress of 80 hour a week software engineering jobs. They didn't need to be taken advantage of, they needed an environment that didn't demand they live under that kind of pressure, and an organization that was in tune to the consequences of applying this kind of pressure to non-neurotypical employees. I wonder if program's like Microsofts deal with this. These are special needs employees - and its sick to read that business people want to exploit someone's disability to further their own careers. The social skills issue is often not for want of social connection, but a frustrating inability to be able to participate. Again, this is a disability, not a choice. The social isolation can easily turn to depression and an unintentional withdrawal from society with co-morbid substance abuse problems. Someone else in this discussion mentioned the recent medical examiner findings about Ian Murdock's suicide.