https://europepmc.org/article/med/32297123 Ha. Fresh new research. This on 'self injury' in autism. Big study. I have questions. Thread.
Studies go back as far as 1976 (!)
It is nearly all people with intellectual disability who are also autistic, and so we cannot tell which was responsible/

For some of the research papers, they listed the sort of 'self injury' recorded.
Hitting a hand.
Hitting an object.
Picking a spot.
Nibbling a fingernail.
Grinding teeth.
Falling on the floor.
Being sick.

Ummm....well...../

Have you ever done any of those?

I think I'm going to get myself a nice cup of tea now.

Ah, that's better. Where were we?
Now, important of course to be clear that if any individual is doing themselves actual harm, it's really really important to find safer solutions with them. And yes, some autistic people do use self-harm as (e.g.) a way to avoid suicide/

...or, as a way to cope with absolutely intolerable pain or stress, placed upon them by others.
Or as a way to communicate, because no alternative has been provided/people just aren't realising they're communicating.
So, yes, in a few cases, it can be serious/

But I am not at all sure that adding in 'biting your nails' as a self injury is helpful, without a scale of what's meant.
I am specifically concerned because in the Behaviourist Industries, a child even touching their skin is recorded as 'self injury' by some. I am not joking/

...& as a result of their report that the child is 'self-injuring' a lot, they get funding to coerce the child to sit utterly still whilst in pain and distress, hour after hour.
So I like to be really clear about whether an autistic person is in fact injuring themselves severely/

..or whether it is a team whose company is being paid a breathtaking sum of money to 'treat' 'self injurious behaviour' and pretty much inventing it.

This study doesn't delve deeply enough.
More research is needed on this.

The research in it is nearly all on males, and nearly all children or young people.
So what it tells us about the likelihood of *actual injury* in (say) a middle aged autistic woman is nil. Nothing. Nowt.
Older people? Who knows.
We must not generalise.

Whilst it is vital (as said) to help those that need help, it can be deeply damaging to portray a significant number autistic people as being likely to spend their time bouncing off the walls. That error causes real harms to potential employment, relationships and otherwise.

If we look at the studies they list, apparently for giving your skin a scratch [could be to relieve itching - we don't know], different studies report this as (out of 100 autistic people), less than 1, 4, 6, 9, 11, 15, and even 35 out of 100.
Er...mmm....no/

I would suggest that what's going on here is that the original researchers all had entirely different views on what was 'scratching'. And that's the problem, isn't it. That everyone can make up any definition they like/

As for ethics, the authors list no ethical standards whatsoever. None.

Really?

So they couldn't think of a single potential harm from any of this?

Writing a paper collecting info from stuff as far back as 1976, based mostly on young males with Intellectual Disability, and heaven only knows what random definitions...then declaring that 42 out of every 100 autistic people use self-injury, based on the mess? No harm?

I put it to the general research industry for autistic people that it has become so utterly immune the harms it has done that it is now incapable of realising those harms even exist.

We are people.
We deserve research that is done with courtesy, ethics and care.

Thank you.

[being clear of course that there are some excellent researchers out there - I work with a good number of them. But yikes, we can see how bad some of the big stuff is...]