I'll admit I don't know much about autism but don't one of the traits involve difficulties in social interactions? I would think it would be really hard to get a group of anti-socials together.
I mean if you think about it, if you don't like hanging around people why would you want to go to a social event?
Now, it's kind of overgeneralizing the Deaf as one big shiny happy family; we really are a diverse collection of people who just happen to share the same disability. I've actually disliked some deaf people and in my 34 years of life on this planet all of my friends have been hearing. I even went to a deaf school for summer camp and hated it.
Plus nowadays with the convenience of the internet it's not really worthwhile anymore to travel to some place to meet some people for a few hours. Why go through all that hassle if you can just join an online forum like this?
My 2 cents on this is to focus more on online resources such as facebook, twitter, or meetup.com or whatever is out there. You say there have been too many suicides and well, think about it, if someone is suicidal they're not going to be thinking about going to some meetup. Instead they'll most likely be looking around online for answers or advice. And again, due to the autisum trait of anti-socialism it's kind of a difficult situation; how do you get a person like that to reach out for help? At least make it easier by offering some online resource like stories on dealing with autism or even some youtube page talking about your struggles with autism so others will know they are not alone.
Hope that helps and good luck!
