Is "sluggish schizophrenia" just a Soviet concept?

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In the 60s to mid 70s ,when I was at school , various comments were made , but nothing joined together to make a diagnosis of any kind . Those were 'poorly coordinated','messy' 'disorganised' , 'the type of boy to get bullied' 'poor at drawing and writing' etc .

My first school c1962 were so concerned that I might be spastic they mentioned it to my parents, who had me assessed at Gt Ormond street . The result was negative , but the problems were still there .

But didn't you say that the label of childhood schizophrenia was for milder cases while infantile autism for more severe cases? Or are you saying that milder cases are still more severe than Asperger? What about HFA? Would HFA people be labeled with childhood schizophrenia? Or are they too mild as well?

Would schizophrenia be on the list of possible misdiagnoses?



That doesn't negate the question "what would happen IF one seeks diagnosis". Just like most people don't jump out the window for obvious reasons, one can still ask "what would happen IF one does". Same with seeking a diagnosis. So IF someone (who would today be labeled as Asperger) doesn't care about stigma and just walks into the doctors office to seek diagnosis, what would happen?



I haven't heard of them. Can you review who they are?

And since you said they were diagnosed with autism in the 60s and 70s does this, by default, imply that they were diagnosed with schizophrenia, since autism was considered to be its form?



That is surprising. I was assuming Kanner was focused on low functioning cases and they, by default, are mentally ret*d. But now you are saying that he said it doesn't affect cognition.

By the way I googled about his first case, Donald, and he sounds high functioning. I mean he travelled a lot and he plays golf. I didn't read about his other cases though. So I am wondering if others are similar to Donald or if Donald is an odd one out.

Last edited by QFT on 28 Apr 2020, 11:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

But what do OCD and schizotypal have in common? Or are you saying you are just looking at all mental disorders across the board and grouping them by severity? So everything "less serious" is neurosis and everything "more serious" is psychosis, regardless of what disorders you are looking at?



Are you saying that some of the people diagnosed with "childhood schizophrenia" wouldn't have been diagnosed with autism, even today?

Probably many of them would have been diagnosed with autism, or something like “sensory processing disorder” today.

Like I said, Infantile Autism was narrowly diagnosed, Childhood Schizophrenia was more of a vague, broad disorder which covered many symptoms and presentations.

Autism from the 1940s to the early 1980s was a severe disorder with a poor prognosis. The prognosis for those with childhood schizophrenia varied widely—from poor to good.

Generally, Speaking, Still Now, Folks Do Not Get Diagnosed
With Anything Until they Start Having Functional Problems Fitting Into the World As Is;
Or 'Society Starts' Having Problems with them; Many Historical Diagnoses of so-called Illnesses
Are Precisely for What Society Sees as Social Norms or Not. Schizoid, Generally Speaking Is Dead Inside, With
Little Meaning Perceived in Life at All; Schizotypal Is the Kind of Magical Thinking That Believes UFO's Are Real
And 'They' are sure they were Abducted; No Doubt, Schizotypal May Be More Fun than Basically 'Dead Personality';
Again; Neuroscience Shows We Basically Hallucinate Our Realities Based on Past Experiences on the 'Fly as We Go.

True; Some Folks are Rather 'Grounded' and cannot even Hallucinate A 3-D Mask Illusion As Science Shows;
That Applies to Both Autistic Folks; and Folks on the Schizophrenia Spectrum as Well; Autism is a Behavioral
Diagnosed Disorder; The Factors that Underly the Condition May Be Much Different than the Environment that
Brings Reciprocal Social Communicating Functioning Disability.

Some Studies Show Folks With Autism Have Highly Functioning Mirror Neurons; and Others Do Not.
It's a Myth that Most Folks With Asperger's Syndrome are STEM Majors in College; as studies Show only
about 33 Percent who go are; That's No Surprise; as Studies Show Folks With Higher Functioning Autism Have
Some 'Non-Verbal Learning Disorder' up to around 50 Percent; Some Have Extreme Empathy Abilities; And
Others With the Disorder Actually admit they Experience No Feelings of Empathy; JUST NONE.

Again; If One Adapts well enough to Society as is; And Society Doesn't Have Substantial Problems;
Unscathed, one Person May Go Without Diagnosis with More Symptoms than Someone Else's Issues,
Who Are Diagnosed where the Environment of School, Work, Or Home is Much More Difficult as a Social Challenge.

It Would Be Nice 'These Days', If a Medication could Help Discerning What Is Lie Or Truth.

Ignorance Doesn't Have a Code in the DSM5; Yet Ignorance, Will Most Definitely Kill, Slower And Faster True.

Meanwhile, Forests of Facepalms continues to Grow 'Thicker' And Thicker until whatever Limit Finally Bites Back HARDER.

That is interesting, because a while ago I heard the opposite: that hospitalizations were a lot more common back then than they are today. So, for example, the homeless we see on the streets today, would have been hospitalized back then.

So could it be that there are three categories of people:

Mild: neither seek outpatient treatment, nor get hospitalized
Moderate: get outpatient treatment but don't get hospitalized
Severe: get hospitalized

So, if we label mental illness on the level 1 through 10, then back in 60-s mild was 1-4, moderate was 5, severe was 6-10; but today mild is 1-3, moderate is 4-7 and severe is 8-10. Thats why today we have less hospitalizations than back then while more people seek treatment. In other words, the "moderate" category used to be really narrow but got expanded. Since it got expanded in both directions, we have two opposite trends. The "mild" end of moderate became milder, so more people seek outpatient treatment, the "severe" end of moderate became more severe so less people get hospitalized.

Is this what it is, or do you have a different theory?

There were fewer options because less was known.

I would say back then it was roughly 1-6 were character flaws(weird/lazy/attention seeker/drama queen), 6-7 see a shrink, 7-10 institutionalization. I did purposely overlap because there are always borderline cases.

Many who would have been institutionalized back then, with less stigma are seeing professionals now, are in group homes or some sort of program. Group homes, programs, special ed were not around much back then. Back then public schools not only were not required by law to educate everybody they were in some states required by law not to accept the physically and mentally disabled.

The big date for “mainstreaming” in the US was 1976, with the enacting of the first Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA).

This is when attitudes towards the disabled—especially those with relatively subtle disabilities—began to change.