People With Autism Experience Higher Intensity Pain

By Ariel Grossman, NoCamels January 30, 2023 2 minutes

Until now, it was believed that people with autism were ‘indifferent to pain’, because some have a tendency to self-harm. Courtesy Victoria Akvarel / Pexels

People with autism experience pain at a higher intensity than the general population, says a new study. And they are less able to adapt to it.

Until now, it was believed that people with autism were ‘indifferent to pain’, because some have a tendency to self-harm. The question of whether they ‘hurt’ more than the general population was hardly studied.

Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the University of Haifa hope their findings will lead to more appropriate treatment by medical staff, caregivers, and parents.

The study included 52 adults with high-functioning autism and normal intelligence, and examined the link between stimulus and response.

Researchers controlled the duration and intensity of the stimulus, while volunteers were asked to rank the intensity of the pain from zero to 100.

Previous studies have found that people with sensory hypersensitivity, which affects 10 percent of the population, suffer from pain more than people without it.

They have difficulty, for example, with ignoring the crunching of popcorn by someone sitting next to them at a movie theater, or adapting to the buzzing or flickering of fluorescent lights.

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For people with autism, these rates are 70 to 90 percent. But because of the opinion that they are indifferent to pain, researchers have not thought to study their actual pain perception.

“Our study constituted a comprehensive, in-depth study of the intensity of pain experienced by people with autism,” said Dr. Tami Bar-Shalita of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University.

“The prevalent belief was that they are supposedly ‘indifferent to pain’, and there are reports that medical and other professional staff treated them accordingly.

“The results of our study indicate that in most cases, the sensitivity to pain of people with autism is actually higher than that of most of the population, while at the same time they are unsuccessful at effectively suppressing painful stimuli.

“We hope that our findings will benefit the professionals and practitioners handling this population, and contribute to the advancement of personalized treatment.”

The research was published in the prestigious PAIN journal.