Would like a little more information

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Are there some articles you guys could point me to about the link between schizophrenia and autism.

One of my friends recently had to be committed (this was the second time, but the first time since I met him) after he was hearing voices, getting strange delusions like he was in Halo, compulsions and started to become a threat to himself and others.

When we first were getting to know each other I told him I thought I was autistic and he said he thought he could be on the spectrum as well since as a child he had always seen life sort of as a video game which he would run simulations of social situations and try to figure out the best choices and then act on them in real life. I didn't say anything (as I know that every aspie is unique) but that really struck me as more indicative of schizophrenia, or am I wrong? Can aspies without schizophrenia also get delusions and hallucinations?

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/autism/ ... izophrenia

I also thought I was on the spectrum before I was diagnosed w/ schizophreniform. I don't know about autistic people having hallucinations or anything, but I know that the negative symptoms of schizophrenia can look a lot like autism.

And an article:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4436160/

Delusions and hallucinations are part of the schizophrenia label. Autistic people without schizophrenia will not experience delusions or hallucinations. But a lot of autistic people can me misdiagnosed as schizotypal, because some of the symptoms are similar:

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/schiz ... -symptoms/

Schizotypal personality disorder is characterized by someone who has great difficulty in establishing and maintaining close relationships with others. A person with schizotypal personality disorder may have extreme discomfort with such relationships, and therefore have less of a capacity for them. Someone with this disorder usually has cognitive or perceptual distortions as well as eccentricities in their everyday behavior.

Individuals with Schizotypal Personality Disorder often have ideas of reference (e.g., they have incorrect interpretations of casual incidents and external events as having a particular and unusual meaning specifically for the person). People with this disorder may be unusually superstitious or preoccupied with paranormal phenomena that are outside the norms of their subculture.

Ended up talking to his parents today after he stole their car and came to my house, apparently he had been diagnosed as schizoaffective bipolar but hadn't shared that information with anyone. Wish we would have known, at the very least I would have discouraged his drug use or not allowed it at my place.

I feel sh***y about it, but ended up having to call the police after he started getting aggressive, threatening his parents, and refusing to go home with them or back to the mental health facility.

First, I can tell you from personal experience that attempting to discourage him from drug use would have only resulted in his rejection of your friendship and he would probably of ended up in a worse situation. Self medication is a terrible problem for us. And do not feel bad about getting him help by calling the police. Once we're in a delusional state (which drugs exacerbate btw), bad things can and do happen, things we would never ever consider ourselves capable of doing.

That being said, I believe your original question was about Autism and it's relationship to schizophrenia if any. At one time, it was believed that you could only have one or the other. Autism was originally known as Childhood Schizophrenia. Since they share a lot of the same negative symptoms, it was difficult for professionals to distinguish between them until the person had their first psychotic episode and displayed the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. It has only been in the last decade or two with the advent of fMRI and other methods for seeing how the brain really works that they have started to understand that while they may share some features, they are in fact 2 separate disorders with a clear degree of overlap that may reflect shared etiological mechanisms. So a person can have schizophrenia co-morbid with autism.

In my case, having Asperger's actually helped me. Logical thinking goes a long way towards combating delusions and hallucinations. But no matter how strong your mind or how good your meds, when you have an episode of decompensation, you are no longer a rational being and need help.

I have experienced repeats ever 3-7 years since I was 17. I'm not going to talk about how depressing it is to restart your life from scratch each and every time, but I will say that for years at a time, I do have a good life. I'm a computer professional and I'm good at it (which was a drawback when I was a functioning addict since a good paying job and self-medicating is a bad combo), you gotta the benefits some of us get from our Asperger's, but if you are one of the lucky one's, please remember that we are a minority of autistic s. And I would give up a lot of my IQ to just be able to walk up to a stranger and start a conversation, or not fear simply walking out my front door. Anyhow, got a bit off topic there.

Try this Autism-Schizophrenia study for an interesting study on the similarities and differences.

_________________
ASD, ADHD-PI, PTSD , BI-Polar 2

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Imagine my therapist's embarrassment when it turned out they really were after me.