Key Points

• Grief is unique to each person and doesn’t follow a fixed timeline.
• Autistic individuals may experience grief from various losses, including loved ones, favourite objects, hobbies, or safe spaces.
• Autistic individuals experience and express grief differently from neurotypical individuals.
• They may struggle to express and understand their grief, leading to varied behavioural and physical responses.
• Behavioural responses: delayed or intense emotional responses, increased sensitivity, difficulty with executive functioning and emotional regulation.
• Physical responses: nausea, headaches, body pains, menstrual/digestive changes.
• Anxiety and social concerns: concerns about unfamiliar social settings, life changes, and the loss of routines.
• Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD): prolonged and intense grief may require professional help due to its impact on daily life.

Grief and the Autistic Person

Grief is a natural response when we lose someone or something we care about. This can happen in many situations, like:

• The death of a family member, friend, neighbour, coworker, teacher, or a beloved pet.
• Losing a job or ending a relationship, or major life changes like a divorce or moving to a new place.
• Big events that affect the community or the whole world, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The death of a public figure, like a political leader or celebrity, even if we didn’t know them personally.
• Serious illness or the nearing death of ourselves or someone close to us.

For autistic individuals, both children and adults, grief might also involve the loss of favourite objects, hobbies, or a safe space that provided comfort.

While there’s a lot of research on how grief affects people generally, we’re just starting to understand how it impacts autistic people specifically

5 important Universal Facts About Grief:

1. Grief is unique to each person

We all handle grief in our own way, and how we cope with it can vary from person to person. It’s important to understand that grieving doesn’t reflect how much we cared for the person who passed away; it’s just how we individually react to the loss. Our reactions can change based on different types of losses we face.

2. Grief doesn’t follow a timetable

Grieving doesn’t stick to a set timeline or stages. It’s more like a rollercoaster, with emotional ups and downs. A new loss can bring back feelings from a past loss and you might respond differently than before.

Autism and Grief

Autistic individuals might find it difficult to express how they feel when they experience a loss. Their reaction to a loss could vary depending on their understanding of what happened and how well they can share their feelings.

Understanding death, which is a complex and abstract concept, can be especially hard for many autistic individuals. They may realise someone is gone but struggle to express what they feel about it or how it changes their daily life.

For example, an autistic child might not fully understand what it means when someone dies or know how they’re expected to behave in situations like funerals or mourning.

Personal accounts from autistic individuals show that they often experience and respond to grief differently from the neurotypical population. Autistic adults might experience emotional, behavioural, physical, and mental reactions that are similar to anyone else feeling stressed.

An autistic person may respond to grief in the following ways:

No outward change

• May not cry or show emotions
• Difficulty connecting to own emotions

Behavioural responses

• Show a delayed or very intense emotional response
• Appear more restless, fidgety
• Experience an increase in autistic traits such as sensitivity to sensory input, meltdowns, shutdowns, or difficulty in speaking clearly.
• Find it harder to organise, plan and concentrate on tasks – a set of skills known as executive functioning.
• Find it harder to manage and understand their own emotions – also known as emotional regulation

Physical changes

• Physical issues such as nausea, headaches, body pains, or changes in menstrual or digestive patterns.

Anxiety

• Concerns about how to appropriately behave in social settings like visiting hospitals, attending funerals or handle strong emotions from others
• Concerns about changes in their life due to the loss – fear of losing familiar and predictable routines.

It’s important to know that if an autistic person doesn’t show any obvious changes in their behaviour, it doesn’t mean they aren’t sad or don’t understand the loss. It could indicate they are feeling overwhelmed. Their grief should be acknowledged and understood. They will need time and space to make sense of the loss and express their feelings in a way that works for them.

When to Seek Professional Help?

Grief doesn’t follow a set schedule. Each person experiences it in their own way. For autistic individuals, their experience of grief can be different from others.

On average, research shows that 7 – 10% of people will experience severe grief, also known as Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD). There is limited research into whether this is more or less common for autistic people.

PGD happens when someone experiences intense grief for more than six months. This type of grief affects both the body and mind, making daily life difficult

These signs are important to recognise for getting the necessary support to manage grief healthily. Grief can sometimes be so intense that it needs to be treated like a trauma. Therapy can help. If you or the autistic person you support, feels overwhelmed by grief for a long time, it’s important to seek help from a mental health professional who knows how to support people who are grieving.

For guidance on how to prepare an autistic person for loss and the grieving process, please see

Keep in touch!