People with Severe Intellectual Disabilities Die 24 Years Earlier, Study Shows

Researchers at King’s College London examined mortality data for adults with intellectual disabilities in England and found that individuals with severe or profound disabilities died at an average age of 58 years, compared with 65 years for those with mild or moderate disabilities and 82 years for the general population. The analysis indicates that this group loses 24 years of life expectancy relative to the wider population.

The Guardian

The study used records from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Learning Disabilities Mortality Review (LeDeR) programme. It covered 1,301 adults with severe or profound intellectual disability who died between 2021 and 2023, 2,626 adults with mild or moderate disability who died in 2022, and 536,311 adults from the general population who died in 2022.

The Guardian

Researchers classified 40 % of deaths among the severe/profound group as “avoidable,” meaning they occurred before age 75 from preventable or treatable conditions. The most common avoidable causes were pneumonia and epilepsy, followed by cerebrovascular disease. These causes were markedly more frequent in the severe/profound cohort than in the milder disability or general-population groups.

The Guardian

Within the severe/profound cohort, individuals identified as Black, Asian, or from other minority ethnic backgrounds died on average 14 years younger than their white peers. The researchers suggest that this gap may reflect additional barriers to healthcare access for ethnic-minority people with disabilities, compounding existing health inequities.

The Guardian

Jon Sparkes, chief executive of the learning-disability charity Mencap, described the findings as “shocking but sadly unsurprising.” The study’s results underscore calls for targeted health-service reforms to close both disability-related and ethnic-based mortality gaps.

The Guardian