Misdiagnoses of schizotypal?

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Before I was diagnosed with aspergers, some doctors mistakenly lead me to believe I had schizotypal personality disorder. Have any other aspies here have had a similar experience? Or have been misdiagnosed with another schizophrenia spectrum disorder?

I have heard it can be hard to distinguish between mild forms of schizophrenia and autism.

I have read that the same genes have been linked to both conditions and that often times in a family you have one child with Autism and one with a Schizophrenic disorder. That happened in a family I am attached to.

I was given schizoaffective diagnosis before I got my asperger's diagnosis, I believe the former is a misdiagnosis. Four doctors in the ER tried to convince me I was psychotic but they all failed miserably and just made a fool of themselves.

What psychotic symptoms did they think they saw? And what were you presenting in the ER for?

They thought intestinal worms were a psychotic delusion despite having a photograph of one at the time(since then a further 6 more HD photographs including a worm my mother picked out of the toilet and brought to the doctors office). I am sure when I was really pissed off my speech wasn't neurotypical either and probably resembled disorganized speech. I was in there because I was feeling suicidal because I was extremely physically ill(still am 6 months later) and doctors were doing f**k all about it(still are). I had called a crisis line and they hauled me off to the ER. It was a traumatizing experience to say the least.

Wow Noca, it's too bad you had to deal with that in the ER. I guess you have had some of the worst experiences with doctors that I have heard of. Are you at least being treated for the parasites? (I hope)

At the same time, I feel I should mention the difference between ER docs, primary care docs, and specialists. The goal for emergency medicine is to treat anything acute that could threaten life or get worse if not seen immediately. They see a lot of patients rapidly and their main focus is to spare lives. Primary care doctors take longer and get to know their patients more, or should, and their role is prevention as well as diagnosis. Specialists provide specialized knowledge the primary care or ER docs couldn't reasonably have (because there's too much information in the world), they usually have a limited period of involvement with each patient (one surgery, or a couple diagnostic visits, etc.) then pass you back to your primary doc.

ER docs can be expected to make many, many mistakes but at least you should be alive when you leave the hospital. Primary care docs are the ones who have ongoing contact with you. They may make mistakes, but they are supposed to refer you to specialists if it's beyond their knowledge. They do a lot of educating and may help a patient make decisions as well as learn the right self-care. Specialists are the biggest jackasses around when it comes to bedside manner, but you want a really smart and talented one if your health is on the line.

So for diagnostic mistakes, perhaps this framework explains and puts into perspective the different kinds of doctors.

OP, the doctors who mentioned schizotypal, what setting were they - ER, primary care, specialists? I would expect them to make mistakes if they didn't have adequate information to base their diagnosis on. What part of the world are you in? How long did it take you to get to a specialist capable of diagnosing your ASD?

I could write a 1000 page novel with all the bad experiences I have had with doctors here. I live in Canada, and incompetent doctors from all corners of the globe come to work here. No they are surprisingly not treating me for that, the GI doctor I am seeing atm is having me run on a wild goose chase that will ultimately materialize into zero answers and absolutely no help whatsover just like all the useless doctors before him. They want to create the illusion that they are doing work, when in reality, they give more thought to deciding whether they should eat Cheerios or Shreddies for breakfast. He has me taking antibiotics because he didn't believe I had worms because the tests were all negative. Of course he isn't intelligent enough to be able to reason or think critically himself, he mindlessly relies on all of his tests like they are the holy gospel, and doesn't have the brains to be able to interpret the results.

Test results are useless unless someone has the intelligence to be able to interpret them, understand the accuracy of said tests and under what conditions false positives or false negatives occur. His alternative explaination was a total load of baloney, trying to claim that it was just mucous. I said if I brought a worm to him and dropped it on the desk in front of him, if that would be enough, but he gave me some BS about that he is not an entomologist and he wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a worm and mucous even if he could manipulate it with his own hands in front of him. Obviously he is an idiot. I don't need to be an Arborist to be able to tell the difference between a tree and a telephone pole even if I wouldn't know the exact species of tree.

I typed out a 3 page report compiling all the evidence I had to prove my case, including bringing my mother a third party witness but it was no use, he is an idiot. Lets see if we can sumarize the BS explainations doctors have given me so far on this issue. "It's just OCD", "It's just IBS", "It's schizoaffective disorder", "It's mucous". I have seen dozens of doctors spanning 9 years now who nearly all of which have repeatedly dismissed, or ignored my digestive symptoms which have only got worse and worse culiminating in pretty much a total digestive system failure. I haven't been able to digest a raw green vegetable in over 2 years now. The last time I ate a solid cooked vegetable was 12 months ago and the last solid piece of any food my body was able to digest was back in June. I lost so much weight that I look like a human skeleton.

All doctors do is play games. My garbage family doctor wasn't going to do anything, just blamed it on "anxiety" and felt that being able to digest food was an unnecesary bodily function. He didn't care if I never was able to eat a solid piece of food again in my life, and it wasn't until I told that bag of garbage off, that it was unacceptable, that he needed to get off his ass and do something. Even then the doctor told me that he would write a referral if I gave him a name of a GI specialist I wanted to see. I told him what does he think I have, GI specialists on speed dial or something? I told him I don't know any GI speciailsts. He told me to Google them. I told that bucket of rocks that the College of Physicians and Surgeons says that it is HIS job to find a specialist NOT the patient's job! He is honestly one of the dumbest people I have ever met.

With regards to ASD, doctors were too dumb to think of it themselves, too busy ignoring every last word I said to them. To those who did listen, they asked me why I wanted to get diagnosed if there was no treatment. Of course I the patient had to tell them the value of a diagnosis, instead of them telling me, always end up having to do their job for them. I had mentioned it to a psychiatrist about 3.5 years ago and she agreed I probably had Asperger's. At the time, I was mistaken and thought that was enough to get a diagnosis. But of course, she never wrote anything in my file, and each new doctor had not the slightly idea of what I was talking about.

My last family doctor I had typed out 4 pages of aspie traits that I shared, giving examples for each, and eventually concluded (after I finally got his lazy butt to read them) that I was what was called HFA. I asked 3 times for him to send me to a specialist who would formally assesss me and he ignored me each time. I asked my current family doctor on 3 seperate times to find someone to assess me, all of which were ignored. No surprise as he ignores literally every word I say, which leads him to f**k up nearly every request or task he is given.

I finally gave up trying to get publicly funded doctors to listen, Googled psychologists who specialize in diagnosing Asperger's, made a few phone calls, found one in a neighbouring city and just paid privately to her. It took 4 sessions of $145, and she told me that I was clearly on the spectrum, and handed me a signed letter stating my diagnosis of Asperger's. She asked a rhetorical question/statement that she didn't understand how so many professionals could have missed the diagnosis when all the signs were there and were so obvious. I didn't know it was a rhetorical question/statement so I answered her and said that doctors ignore every single word that I say, that's how. Of course she already knew that and I wasn't supposed to answer lol.