Common comorbids with Autism and Asperger's Syndrome.

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1. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (this is the most common one obviously, which is quite ironic since they're supposed to be opposites with the attention span)
2. Epilepsy
3. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
4. Tourette's Syndrome
5. Schizophrenia
6. Intellectual Disability (this is common with Autism and not Asperger's Syndrome)
7. Clinical Depression
8. Down's Syndrome (approximately 15% of the folks with Down's Syndrome have been said to also have Autism).
9. Anxiety Disorder
10. Oppositional Defiant Disorder
11. Learning disabilities
12. Bipolar Disorder
13. Personality Disorder

Add onto my list of other common comorbidities to the two. Do you have any of these?

I have ADHD-PI.

I'm pretty sure schizophrenia shouldn't be on there. I don't think there is any correlation.

I can see how a misdiagnosis can occur since symptoms of Autism can resemble schizophrenia especially in childhood. AS was called childhood schizophrenia at one time and I know if I was born twenty years ago people would have thought I was a child schizophrenic because of my AS.

There still isn't an actual correlation as far as I know just a possible misdiagnosis which wouldn't even happen nowadays.

This is because an AS diagnosis automatically requires this to be excluded.

I do wonder about the Schizophrenia connection. Very Early Onset Schizophrenia is the only form that I know is actually associated with autism significantly. Otherwise I'd assume that it's somewhat uncommon.

I have been watching some University of California lectures on Youtube recently that suggest that schizophrenia and the autism spectrum are largely opposites - e.g. Bernard Crespi's videos.

That doesn't necessarily prove that they can never be comorbid, but it does suggest a negative correlation.

The big missing comorbid is sensory processing disorder, although the forthcoming DSM5 makes it a symptom of ASD, rather than a comorbid condition (SPD is not yet recognised in the DSM's).

One could also add other unofficial disorders like: social and emotional learning disorder, pragmatic language impairment, alexithymia, etc. These are all described either in Wikipedia or Youtube.

By the way, people with ADHD can stay focussed on one thing for a long time if it is giving them immediate rewards (e.g. computer games). What they have difficulty with are activities that have no immediate and intrinsic rewards, like school work and chores, and activities where interruptions or extraneous sensations occur (e.g. strangers walking past). People with ADHD are very easily distracted if they are not absorbed in their current activity - and once distracted, they easily lose the working memory for what they were doing, which makes it harder to resume the task.

A lot of this applies to Aspies, and it does not contradict the fact that we have special interests. We can focus on our special interests because we find them intrinsically rewarding. We just don't find most other things as absorbing, and we often behave in ADHD-like ways outside our special interests. I remember reading that about 60% of Aspies would meet most or all of the criteria for ADHD (PI at least). In any case, both ASD and ADHD have problems with executive functions. People with ADHD have better social and emotional intelligence than those with ASD, although they (ADHD) often have problems with social interaction caused by distractibility and impulsiveness. And people with ADHD don't have the "three Rs": rigid routine, repetitive behaviours, and restricted interests. Although not quite as often as ASD, people with ADHD do frequently have sensory sensitivity.

Last edited by one-A-N on 20 Jan 2013, 5:40 am, edited 2 times in total.

Actually there are many who are missing on your list...!

- sleeping disorders
- alexithymia
- NVLD
- PLI
- prosopagnosia
- dyscalculia
- dyslexia
- hyperlexia
- savant-syndrome
- tuberous sclerosis
- chromosomal disorders like klinefelder-syndrome and so on

If you want to know what I have, check out my sgnature.

Last edited by Raziel on 19 Jan 2013, 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

AS and ADHD-C.


Depends. I heard that even people that only have AS have troubles with their attention span if they're doing something they're not interested in; I also heard that people with only ADHD are able to hyperfocus on something they're interested in.