Asperger's and schizophrenia.

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MCDD and MDD aren't in the DSM IV and aren't widely recognized as being actual conditions. I would take anything you read on the internet about them with a grain of salt. Having personally known someone with schizophrenia, I know she absolutely will not ever admit to being schizophrenic. I think this MCDD and MDD is an attempt for those who have been diagnosed as schizophrenia to continue denying they have it, and to avoid treatment for it.

It actually allows Schizophrenia and Asperger's to coexist in the DSM-IV-TR, see:

People really shouldn't just look at the criteria.

From my own personal opinion in regards to Aspergers and Schizophrenia, I've alwways felt that both trouble conditions yes, share some qualities but, more than likely tend to be their own seperate medical realities.. I'm no doctor but, honestly I've actually came across someone whom has Schizophrenia-- with symptoms of delusions and for the most part I honestly can't see how another person might mis-identitfy as such.Still, anything is possible in this world..



ProfessorX

i read somewhere ( on an official document)

that they were considering puting MCDD in the DSM V which is coming out in 2011

im not soure what they decided or not

Most times, they're not. We think that our thoughts and ideas are different from others, but people, generally, share similar thoughts. Some just analyze more, or are more imaginative, suspicious, concrete, logical. Others are more detail-oriented and notice particulars. We are all connected uniformly (hate to break it to you).

Symptoms of delusions are "positive" symptoms. If enough "negative" symptoms are present, and there is clear evidence of clinically significant mal-adaptivity, plus a few things that might be construed as delusional (such as the notion that people are picking on you, or are all "in on" information/communicating information to which you are not aware and excluded from) in the context of negative symptoms being present and the absence of any other clinical explanation, then it's all too easy for someone to be misdiagnosed.

Some people with ASDs are very suggestible and socially passive. If they are told something enough, by people they perceive as authoritative (in terms of knowledge), then they can begin to believe what they are told. From being placed on hard core drugs, to being told one is suffering delusions of belief, and often perceptual/sensory hallucination (for instance the delusion that particular stimulus is painful being interpreted by medical professionals and explained to the patient as sensory hallucination), and that they have a degenerative condition that may or may not be sufficiently controlled by the medications to prevent further delusions or hallucinations, they might believe that they are experiencing hallucinations. They might, with enough leading, develop powerful fantasies in which they over-interpret mere ideas and thoughts as actual visual or audio hallucinations (indeed they may misunderstand the literal quality of real hallucinations as a result of over-compensation for over-literal interpretation).

Additionally, people with ASDs can develop transitory stress related psychosis, and if being medicated with powerful drugs one does not need, and pyscho-educated into believing one has a severe oten degenerative mental illness, does not constitute stress, what exactly would?

Knowledge about ASDs is not particularly pervasive in the medical field, including in psychiatry. Arguably, it is silly to suggest people with ASDs were not receiving mental health services prior to 1994, and to this day, many in psychiatry would not recognize an ASD if their (verbal) patient walked into their office proclaiming it.

People with ASDs in the main do superficially appear to have some psychiatric issue if their ASD is ignored (in the context of psychiatric evaluation), because in the main we present with what superficially appears as psychiatric symptoms. I do not know of any comprehensive attempt to identify these people within the psychiatric patient population, and many no doubt are currently misdiagnosed, mis-medicated, and without any prospect of the quality of life they could obtain in the absence of unnecessary and counter-productive "treatment" for non-existent mental illness.

The limited research in this area is led by the UK, and the evidence is that such persons are currently in the mental health system. One report on such research went so far as state directly that it had found patients who were committed to special hospitals with psychiatric diagnoses, because their underlying ASD had been misdiagnosed (with consequential lack of appropriate support and imposition of harmful interventions).

I am terrified of Schitzephenia - I've read articles in the paper about people with that and they've been the most violentest, horriblist people on earth.


Oh my god I am NOT getting that! I don't think I've got it. No no no no no no no it's worse than Altzhiemers!! !! !!

I've been unofficially Dxed with NVLD (NVLD is not a formally-accepted mental disorder) and officially dxed with schizotypal personality disorder several times and schizoid personality disorder (with schizotypal and avoidant features) on my most recent neuropsychological evaluation.

I tend to believe I meet the dx criteria for Asperger's all things considered, but apparently the psycholgists who've tested me disagree. There are many experts who believe schizoid pd and
schizotypal pd are on the schizophrenic "spectrum". I do exhibit many of the negative symptoms
of schizophrenia too. I have been paranoid at times and I still am occasionally. I have never had
any hallucinations, but a few psycholgists felt I was exhibiting psychotic signs because I had some
bodily illusions during panic attacks.


I don't get panic attacks much anymore since I stopped all caffeine intake.


Some of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia can be associated with depression too.


Particularily if the depression is severe or profound.

Joe90, might I direct you to research, for instance, Elyn Saks? She has schizophrenia, and she's neither horrible nor violent; in fact, she teaches law and has written several books. There's a lot of misinformation out there about schizophrenia, and if you haven't done any research of your own, it's easy to come to a conclusion such as the one you just espoused.

First of all, people with schizophrenia are actually not all that violent; the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it. (Not that you'd know it from TV. They intentionally cover stories of bad things done by the mentally ill and ignore bad things done to them. People like Cho Seng-hui are the exception, rather than the rule, but they make for better headlines.)

It may be worse than Alzheimer's, but then again, a full recovery from schizophrenia is possible. (In about a third of cases, there is only one episode. In another third, there are multiple episodes, but the individual still functions.)

It's true that the prognosis is not that great, but it does not necessarily speak to the character of the individual.

Tl;dr version: remember that you get that information from the same people who call autistics soulless and accuse us of being what's left after the real child is stolen away.

I used to work in mental health, and so I met lots of people with paranoid schizophrenia. I observed there is a difference between schizophrenic type of paranoia and Aspergers paranoia.

Paranoid schizophrenic people seem to have a sense that people are out to get them in some way - an intrinic and irrational sense of being a target for all kinds of irrational things. For instance, I knew one woman who was convinced an invisible person kept coming into her room at night an putting invisible contact lenses into her eyes, and no amount of reasoning could persuade her that this was impossible.

I think with the autistic spectrum, paranoia is more a logical result of not being able to read other people or know how they are reacting to you, and frequently having people interpret you as rude and thus be unfrriendly to you as a result. While I don't have a doom-laden sense of the universe being out to get me, I am often not sure whether people are being friendly or unfriendly, or I can sense that they are a bit 'off' but I'm not sure why, so I assume it's my fault because I observe people behave in a certain manner with people they are annoyed with. I also have difficulty distinguishing between whether someone is temporarily irritated with me or permanently dislikes me - black and white thinking makes me assume the latter.

Thinking about it, I'd say that schizophrenic people's paranoia results from trusting their own distorted sense of the world above other people's, whereas mine tends to be a result of distrusting my own sense of the world and thus having nothing to trust.

Not on topic, but I heard so many variations on this theme when I was a kid. Yuck!

It is really unfortunate that the summarised versions of the diagnostic criteria, without any exception that I could find, omit the statement that schizophrenia can co-exist with Asperger's syndrome. The relevant page of the DSM-IV is here http://books.google.ie/books?id=3SQrtpn ... &q&f=false

Schizophrenia actually appears to be more frequent in people with Asperger's (as are anxiety, depression and psychosis).

Pages that misleadingly state only that "Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder or Schizophrenia" (or similar) include these:

http://www.autreat.com/dsm4-aspergers.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnosis_ ... r_syndrome
http://www.aspergers.com/aspcrit.htm
http://autism.about.com/od/aspergerssyn ... aforas.htm

All pages summarising the DSM diagnostic criteria should include the additional text that "By definition the diagnosis is not given if the criteria are met for any other specific Developmental Disorder or for Schizophrenia (although the diagnosis of Asperger's Disorder and Schizophrenia may coexist if the onset of the Asperger's Disorder clearly preceded the onset of Schizophrenia) (Criterion F)."

i recently was involved with someone i was sure had AS and now the more i consider his responses and behaviors i wonder if he is schizophrenic. perhaps this ^ explains it. he was institutionalized as a teenager, but that was before AS as a diagnosis, so .. i assumed he was wrongly diagnosed (though he never spoke of what the diagnosis at the time was) .. he told me "consensus reality" is a matrix and we are actually living on the moon. i still do not know whether that is a delusion or more a metaphorical expression / exaggeration of his feeling of alienation - !?

i find it difficult to disengage from people like this (and i have known a few others), a puzzle i can't solve - is it a theory of mind problem or is the person delusional? my father is like this. schizo spectrum or AS? i don't know. i had never before considered both. undiagnosed / untreated, this is psychological territory that makes me very uneasy .. if you aren't sure whether someone has actual paranoid delusions, you don't know when they "snap" if it is just a meltdown or you are about to get stalked / stabbed.

can ToM impairment, unrecognized, look like delusion / true schiz paranoia when it is not? or externally do both just look similar enough to be easily mistaken for one another? i am talking about people who are undiagnosed, have not sought help. it can be difficult to understand what someone's experience is without their self-reporting. i wonder if i mix up AS / schizo when i see certain traits in others. and so .. i am scared of those i relate to, which isolates me further (since they are so few & far between, i am already very isolated). this sucks!!



i would love to see more of this article. i am scared of my father (and my former friend, whom i discussed earlier) because i can't figure out what is really going on. i wish they would both seek help.

yes. precise. very well said.

Persecutory delusions?

Hon, you're not paranoid if everyone's out to get you. You've gotta realize, we develop our beliefs in an environment where everyone else communicates in ways we don't understand and expects us to be in on some grand secret. They seem shocked and annoyed when we don't pick up on things they don't bother to say. Then when you're about eight or so, previously friendly people suddenly exclude you. They pick on you. Not just your peers, but then adults sometimes join in.

We're not delusional; we have perfectly rational beliefs, given our experiences.

(With regard to grandiosity, yes. You don't understand the way they communicate, so you can't grasp what they're telling you. They call you stupid, but of course, you're not. Also, the average IQ would probably be higher, given that it's a requirement that you not be ret*d; it's reasonable for you to think you're surrounded by idiots. Also, you get annoyed with being considered worthless, and come to consider them worthless. And they don't grasp things that come easily to you. We are not delusional.)

Also, you won't pick up society's "normal" beliefs very easily. Cultural context is very important, because then we could, say, diagnose all Christians as being delusional. In the case of many Aspies, the cultural context is different from that of their next-door neighbors. A lot of things are literal to us that aren't to most people. (I would be utterly incapable of being the sort of Christian that's most common nowadays. I am incapable of believing a document I do not take literally. It's either atheist who rejects everything in it, or extreme literalist Christian who believes every word, none of which is nonliteral except explicitly marked out parables and maybe some of the more surreal prophecies. And I'm a little fuzzy on whether the parables actually happened and are just being used as analogies; after all, you're not supposed to lie... So given that I'm going to be a Christian, I have no choice about sounding a little crazy; the other option is forsaking God entirely, and becoming something which is also often rejected by the culture. And I tried that anyway.)

So when you try to figure out what beliefs are delusional, bear in mind that anything that could seem reasonable if you had a black-and-white worldview and took some common metaphors literally...

Also, there are so many people saying things, all the time, of the form "all humans are X," where X is a trait shared only by most NTs. "Humans are social animals." Plug that and "I am not a social animal" into a syllogism and you get "I am not human." There's too much stuff like that to pronounce an Aspie delusional just because he believes some weird things.

Also, herd mentality may blind you to some truths. Also, what seems sensible from an NT may sound weirder from one of us, because we can't put it delicately (or know not to put it at all).

At the moment, I've read three memoirs by people with schizophrenia. Two of these recound the schizophrenic calling up a friend or confidante to explain what happened on 9/11. In both cases, they were told to take their pills. Be very careful assuming someone is delusional.

100% agree.

i don't know if you were responding to my post(s) above yours; if so i should clarify, in re the two people i was discussing, if either of them were to be DXed with Asperger's, my fear / distrust would cease. the concern was specifically where apparent paranoid behavior was rooted - if in AS (therefore, reactive to experience), it makes sense. impossible for me to tell, in these 2 instances, from outside observation. (these are two very high functioning individuals, who present as eccentric but socially competent)

also, i should add: i don't fear schizophrenia either; what i fear is the undiagnosed who does not know his unreality is unreality. i know someone with paranoid schizophrenia who is akin to a kitten.