Adults with learning disabilities twice as likely to suffer avoidable death

Avoidable deaths in England among adults with a learning disability or autism are almost twice as high as the general population, a new report has shown.

Learning disability support group Staying Alive and Well, in its foreword to the report, described the findings upsetting and warned that failings in the provision of the right support “can harm us, it can even kill us”.

The report’s authors, led by a team at King’s College London, analysed data collected by the ‘Learning from Lives and Deaths – people with a learning disability and autistic people’ programme.

Dying younger

Researchers found that in 2023, “adults with a learning disability on average die 19.5 years younger than the general population”.

They also observed that nearly 60 per “of adults with a learning disability died before the age of 65 years, compared with less than 15% of adults in the general population”.

They reported that a “relatively high proportion of deaths of adults with a learning disability are considered avoidable”, with the rate nearly double that of the populace at-large — 38.8 per compared to 21.6 per cent.

The three most common causes of treatable or preventable deaths among people with learning disabilities in 2023 were influenza and pneumonia (14.9 per cent), cancers of the digestive tract (9.7 per cent) and ischemic heart disease (9.5 per cent).

‘Unacceptable’

Mencap Chief Executive Jon Sparkes said: “People with a learning disability and their families deserve better. In this day and age, no one should die early because they don’t get the right treatment.”

Acknowledging the publication of the research in a written statement to Parliament, Care Minister Stephen Kinnock said that earlier and avoidable death rates among those with a learning disability were “unacceptable”.

In 2020, it was reported that people with learning disabilities had unknowingly been issued with ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ forms during the coronavirus pandemic because of their condition.