signs of schizophrenia

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Our 6 yo who has who is diagnosed with aspergers is complaining of hearing things and seeing things. His behavior at home and in school is really quite good but we are worried. I know autism and schizophrenia are closely related. Anyone else have children with similar symptoms. His seem to be fleeting and we're hoping it's a mix of his imagination and acute hearing. Please help us sort this out. Paul

Schizophrenia typically doesn't really have signs until the person is in their 20's, late teens at the earliest that I'm aware of. Have you talked to their psychologist about it?

Your son may be hypersensitive to sounds and visual stimulations and/or he may have neurological processing problems of sound and/or sight. This is not uncommon among those on the Autism/Asperger's spectrum. Problems with sound can be treated by sound cancelling headphones and by trying to desensitise him to the sounds. If he is having a problem with bright lights that can be helped by sunglasses, but I don't know what to do about seeing things. What sort of stuff does he see? The answer to that may help in figuring out a way to deal with it. Many of us on the spectrum have a very strong day dream life--not hallucinations, but mental story lines we create. It is partly for entertainment used in dealing with boredom, but also partly a way to have a private, inner comfort zone. Perhaps this is what your son is seeing.

I have had many story universes over 5 decades of life. Some have fallen by the wayside, and others have been added. I am in my early 50s and have no plans on dropping this lifelong habit. My story universes are not hallucinations. I know they are not real, they are fictional mind stories I create for my own pleasure, and as a comfort zone. I also sometimes use them to work through problems, by giving similar problems to some of the characters and trying different ways to work things out.

If your son has an active day dream life, that's not a bad thing. Perhaps you can have him write or tape record the story of what he is seeing. This will give you a better idea of what's going on, and will give him another, and an interesting outlet.

Thank you both. Caleb sees something sitting on the back of the couch ( a basketball) etc.- only momentarily and then he realizes it's not there. He sometimes sees things on the wall right before he falls asleep ( which I deem to be quite normal). He doesn't have a lot of this and he has a very vivid imagination. Thanks again.

From what you describe, he may also be visually stimming (especially before he goes to sleep.) Look to see if he is kind of squinting his eyes, and playing with the amount of light that gets in. Sometimes you can see weird things that way, and it may be that he is experimenting with that. I still do that sometimes.

If that is what he does, It is not a sign of anything scary, as far as I know. It is just a stim.

Hmmm . . . I myself could have posted this awhile back. My son is just turning 5. He has a diagnosis of Aspergers. But there have been other things that have made me concerned, just as you are.

He has mentioned a) hearing voices at night. b) voices he can hear in his head but he doesn't know what they are saying c) buzzing sounds in his head or being able to hear the blood pumping in his body. He has also mentioned visual oddities, like how sometimes things get 'swirly' in front of him . . . (usually when over-stimulated). He has also mentioned taking 'pictures' of things that get 'filed' into a book in his head and he pulls out the pictures and looks at them when he wants to build things.

That said, he is not a 'loopy' little kid, really quite wonderful and sweet . . . although with a little bit of a temper problem.

Anyway, we feel like we have narrowed it down to two possibilities.

First, sensory sensitivities and highly visually acute. I think he can hear sounds/voices we sometimes cannot . . . he has even said my typing on the computer sounds like 'thunder'. Visually, he absorbs EVERYTHING. And, I think when his system gets overloaded with sound/sight, he short-circuits and visualizes things he likes or sees things warp a little. Also, I think the 'voices' could be his brain 'repeating' and delayed processing of the speech he hears during the day, particularly if he has a slight processing issue, which is what I think.

Second, the developmental psychologist and neurologist said he had a slightly 'abnormal' eeg . . . which, can be normal. (I don't get that). But it also means he could be having very little 'partial siezures' (undetectable to the human eye), which often cause an 'aura' before they happen. An 'aura' is seeing something, a strange smell, an acute sense of hearing, anything like that as the brain begins to go into a seizure. The only visible evidence is sometimes 'spacing out' and not answering us. Which could be his super focus on his task, could be ignoring us, could be language processing delay, OR could be a minute seizure. Nobody knows!!

So, neurologist is taking a 'wait and see' approach rather than medication. Anyway, if it helps ease your mind at all . . . I had the 'schizophrenic' thought go through my head too. But I think the other options make more sense for him right now.

I thought I was schizophrenic for years because sometimes I would hear ringing or buzzing noises in my ears, or something very faint that sounded like disembodied voices chattering and laughing in some foreign language.

I never told anyone and prayed all the time that I would go away. It never did.

For a while in my 20's I did the whole mystical thing, told myself it was ghosts or some alternate reality overlapping this one or whatever. Something I needed to just ignore, like a ticked-off bluejay screeching in the tree or something.

Now I know they're just sensory processing oddities. I think as long as the kids are living in the same basic reality as the majority of the human race, they're probably not schizophrenic.

Sometimes I think schizophrenia diagnoses in the autistic population are at least occasionally the result of communication failures. I had a psych try to diagnose me as schizophrenic because I was asking for work to do so I didn't have to listen to the voices that I could not get out of my head. I knew I was using a clumsy metaphor, but it was the best I could do at the time. They didn't know that, and didn't think very hard. People do that.

The voices were not hallucinations-- they were memories of nasty things that people had said to me over the last year and a half, and I had forgotten the term "intrusive thoughts" until someone else brought it up. Once someone else came up with the term, I recognized it and the problem was solved-- but the only reason that I didn't spend three days drugged out of my brain on Haldol (or maybe a lifetime, because I'm relatively certain that haloperidol would have completely robbed me of the ability to communicate in any meaningful way-- risperidone was bad enough) was that I did not do anything violent or alarming or aggravating enough to lose the right to refuse medication.

Scary. Schizophrenia is a big terrifying boogeyman. And I'm sure there is a certain level of comorbidity-- seems like anything and anything else can be comorbid and always aggravate each other.

It's hard, but please don't let fear get the better of your common sense. *Hugs*

My daughter has a very vivid and active imagination. She sees things too, but she's fully aware that they are projections from her own mind. She has told a couple of medical professionals about this, who seemed concerned, at first. But once she explained it better, they were quite happy that it was nothing to worry about. The main thing she sees is Sliner from Ghostbusters. She's not at all scared of this character and the image doesn't frighten her. She does appear to have full control over it.

Another thing that can cause kids to see things is a fever or minor illness. I can still remember this happening to me. I saw faces on the wall and eyes all over the settee.

My wife (now separated) is schizophrenic. That meant each of our children has a 1 in 10 chance of developing schizophrenia. Our son is diagnosed high functioning autistic.

It is not too likely that your child is schizophrenic as usually schizophrenia develops later. (My wife for example got it with the stress of pregnancy of our first child). However it is not true that there are not childhood schizophrenics; there are. However only a properly qualified doctor will be able to advise on that.

Schizophrenia is more possible if there is a family history of the illness. I think most childhood symptoms ostensibly of schizophrenia-type symptoms do not denote schizophrenia. My daughter who is basically NT and (very) successful did see things that were not there when she was little, but she is certainly not schizophrenic (or other than very marginally autistic if at all for that matter).

They are? Says who?

Um, so I guess everyone doesn't have this? (I do.)

I don't know if it's pertinent in this situation, but something to remember with kids on the spectrum is that they have difficulty communicating. He may be trying to explain something that you would see as normal, but it's coming out in a way that makes it sound odd. For instance, I could see where kids with photographic memories might have difficulty telling the difference between something that's actually there and a very vivid memory. (Just an opinion, I'm not a doctor.)

Also, I remember DS going through a phase in 1st grade where things suddenly appeared to be huge and frightening when he was nervous (His teacher's feet and hands, for instance.) I think this was due to a combination of nerves, hyperfocus on details, and perseveration. At any rate, this symptom disappeared quite suddenly, so we weren't able to explore it further - but I read somewhere that it is something that can be linked to migraines, which DS does get.

Yeah these are all normal, nothing to do with ASD or anything like that. The auditory stuff sounds like tinnitus to me.

Google it- many sources determine that they are related, I think! Paul

Interesting, I see articles talking about a common genetic cause.

However I don't remember reading on any of these forums about any autistic kids who develop schizophrenia later in life.

Few develop schizophrenia "later in life".

Well my wife is schizophrenic and our son diagnosed autistic. I notice the same sorts of inability to conceptualise or abstractify, rather rigid thinking, improper understanding of what is really going on etc with both.