Suicide

# This teen tried hiding his autism. His parents think it drove him to suicide.

- **By:**   
- **Publisher:** USA TODAY  
- **Date:** 8:00 a.m. ET March 5, 2025  
- **Updated:** 8:34 p.m. ET March 11, 2025

Editor’s note: This article discusses suicide and suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text  or chat at .

Neal and Samara Tricarico first noticed their son Anthony was different when he was about 3.

The Southern California couple discovered that Anthony, then a toddler, had pulled a chunk of his own hair out while they were away. Alarmed, they sought help from professionals. Anthony was diagnosed with  at 4. At 7, he was diagnosed with "high-functioning ," his dad says.

These diagnoses brought relief. And for a while, Anthony seemed to thrive.

He became a stellar student, earning a 4.6 GPA, and often set the curve in his advanced placement classes. Mental health professionals warned him to be cautious before taking actions, his parents say. He had plans for a career in physical well-being, but he eventually began to withdraw from his friends.

Anthony's mental health took a nose dive during the pandemic. He confided in his best friend that he felt . That friend told his mom, who told Neal and Samara. They got Anthony help but knew he was still struggling.

“He just poured himself into physical wellbeing," Neal says. "But we saw the pain. We saw the anguish. We saw the suffering.”

One night, Anthony said he was going for a walk. Shortly after, his parents heard the sirens.

 in recent years. For kids with , it's even more common. According to a , autistic children and teens have about a 5% higher rate of suicidal ideation and are twice as likely to attempt suicide than their non-autistic peers. For kids who are autistic and highly intelligent − a group called "twice exceptional" − the risk is even higher.  found kids with autism and high IQs were nearly six times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than non-autistic kids.

Despite this, experts say barely any research is being done on this overlap. What's worse, they add, is hardly anyone outside the autistic community even seems to be talking about it.

The result has left kids like Anthony to suffer in silence, with their parents, teachers and, in some cases, even their therapists unequipped to help them.

“It's very difficult for us to understand where autism starts and ends, and where being a high schooler, a teenager starts and ends,” Neal says. “That was our biggest challenge in all this. There was no training or tools around that.”

## The kids who suffer in silence

Dr. Mayank Gupta, a psychiatrist and the medical director of Southwood Psychiatric Hospital in Pittsburgh, started seeing a pattern among his patients around 2015.

He says many of the teens who ended up in his practice following a suicide attempt, despite very few apparent risk factors, had similar quirks. Many had food sensitivities. Many avoided certain types of clothes. Many hated loud noises.

Many were also brilliant but struggled socially.

“When I look at their profiles, I see they are honor roll students,” Gupta says. “They come from very good families. But they don’t have friends.”

“It's almost like he overcompensated in the social department because he learned how it operated," Samia says. "Really, underneath that, they are feeling completely isolated and alone and different.”

Maisa McCall loved the outdoors. Here she is pictured on a backpacking trip in Idaho.

Maisa's first suicide attempt, at 13, came as a shock − and it sent Samia down a research rabbit hole to understand what was going on with her daughter. Now, she believes she's found the answer.

According to , about 80% of girls on the spectrum have autism that's still undiagnosed by the time they're 18. Samia believes Maisa was one of these girls. When she brought this idea to the mental health professionals treating Maisa, she faced pushback. She believes that, due to lack of research and information, they didn't understand all the nuances of autism and how they applied to her daughter.

"They said things to us like, 'Oh, well, she makes eye contact,' or 'She has friends,'" Samia says. "We have since talked to people outside of our area that have confirmed our suspicions, that it was pretty clear that she fits the criteria."

Samia says Maisa had sensory issues that made navigating school difficult. The loud noise of the bell bothered her. So did kids bumping into her in the hallway. Samia believes Maisa also had alexithymia, a condition that often comes with autism and makes recognizing emotions challenging. Kids with alexithymia may not know they're angry until they're furious. They may not know they're depressed until they're in crisis.

"They don't know emotions until it's a hundred," Samia says. "And then, with the black-and-white thinking, what will happen is, when those kids are at a hundred, all of a sudden death seems like a good idea."

One reason why kids with autism and high intelligence struggle in particular, Gupta says, is because they have a hard time navigating how academics come so easily but day-to-day social interactions feel so difficult. Why can they recall minute details from a history textbook but struggle at making friends? Why can they write brilliant essays but fumble at expressing their emotions?

Calling these kids "gifted," Samia says, does them a disservice by minimizing their struggles.

"My daughter Maisa was in a gifted program, and she hated the term," Samia says. "She hated being called gifted. And it took me a while to figure out why. And I think you'd be hard pressed to find a child who is gifted, who doesn't have another area where they need support."

Another common misconception, Samia says, is that life is easier when you're smarter; however, this isn't necessarily the case.

“I can't tell you how many times I've had other parents say to me ... ‘Oh, you're so lucky. Your kids are so smart,'" Samia says. "And I think to myself, 'Well, I kind of wish they were less smart, because I think that my daughter might still be alive if she were a little less smart.' Her intelligence kind of enabled her to see a lot of the world for what it was, and that was hard for her."

Instead of addressing or looking into the possibility that Maisa might have autism, Samia says mental health professionals insisted her daughter's problems stemmed mainly from depression. Samia says she tried to speak up about what she believes her daughter was really going through. No one listened.

Maisa died by suicide at 14 in November 2023. Since then, Samia says she fills her days working on , a blog dedicated to her daughter and mental health awareness.

"I don’t fit into all the places where I used to go. I look the same on the outside, mostly. I'm sure I look a lot more tired and older. But I'm completely different," Samia says. "A part of me died when Maisa died. And I'm just sitting here, in the ruins of my life, trying to build something new. But it's never going to be the same for any of us, for me or my husband or my two boys."

## The conversation we need to have

It's never going to be the same for Anthony's family either.

When paramedics found Anthony, a first responder resuscitated him. His heartbeat came back, and he was sent to the hospital in a coma.

Anthony spent nine weeks at a children's hospital where hundreds gathered regularly to pray for his recovery. At first, he made tremendous progress. But then, he got worse. He died in May 2024.

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