Paper: Is schizophrenia on the autism spectrum?

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I get it now. That's an interesting idea, since the cns is at a different age, autism could manifest differently.

I tried to post the DSM page at URL below, but the formatting doesn't carry over, so it's unreadable as a quote.

http://www.schizophrenia.com/ami/diagno ... renia.html

If I'm reading it right, you can be diagnosed with SZ without delusions or hallucinations. The criteria actually look pretty wide. You need two of out of the following:

delusions
hallucinations
disorganized speech
grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior
"negative symptoms (of schizophrenia)"



So, anyone with an ASD is likely already halfway to a SZ diagnosis. Add disorganized speech or catatonic behvaior, and that would apparently be enough.

Maybe they're focusing on the "negative symptoms" as what ASD and SZ have in common.

That's true, you can be diagnosed without auditory hallucinations or delusions, however, the vast majority of people with schizophrenia experience the hallucinations and delusions, so that's what psychiatrists look for. Schizophrenia is characterized by these two main symptoms.

This positive symptom could describe an ASD:

That link does say Asperger's Syndrome can be misdiagnosed as childhood schizophrenia in children.

How bizarre does a belief have to be, and how certain do you have to be of it, for it to count as a delusion?

What makes speech or behavior "disorganized?"

The link says you must have the belief for a month. To be convinced of something for a month is a long time, imo. I tend to forget about stuff in a few days.

That link doesn't say the delusion has to be bizarre. I've read elsewhere they tend to be bizarre and connected with auditory hallucinations in most cases of schizophrenia. They can have paranoid undertones, like a fear the government is trying to get you or that someone is trying to poison you. Paranoid undertones are common, too.
Disorganized speech is a loosening of associations, incoherent, derailed sentences.

But what, precisely, qualifies as a delusion? "The CIA are working for lizard invaders and are out to get me" would qualify, sure, but I imagine that's not the least extreme example. Plenty of perfectly functional people believed that 9/11 was an inside job at one point (everyone seems to have forgotten it now), even though their only evidence for it is that they heard it somewhere, and maybe a note that "some architect" said there was no way for a plane to collapse them, or that "some reporter" was told to hush up his investigation, or something similar.

Being that they are otherwise perfectly functional, I wouldn't advise medicating these people, and if that's actually the extent of what qualifies as a "delusion" in psychiatric terms, then I'm going to have to seriously consider the possibility that paranoid schizophrenia is bunk.

The negative symptoms of schizohprenia seems to effect emotional "appropriateness" similar to the emotional appropriateness of autism, and there seems to be the same common disregard of social behavioral norms. Also, both disorders are connected to hippocampal deformities which is, unsurprisingly, linked to emotional regulation.

There are similarities. But as people have mentioned, autism doesn't have the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. There's no telling what goes through the mind of a low-functioning autistic though. I'm under the impression that autistics don't benefit from antipsychotics as much as schizophrenics do. It could of course have something to do with schizophrenics developing normally.

Dr. Phil: Inside the Mind of Schizophrenia, part 1 (skip to 2:30)
Dr. Phil: Inside the Mind of Schizophrenia, part 3

In this case, they're the same thing. It's been hypothesized that both autism and schizophrenia are caused by increased serotonin and/or dopamine activity. It seems more likely to be a neurotransmitter dysfunction though.

That is an awesome point, our culture is riddled with what some call delusional theories, yet people who believe them are not diagnosed schizophrenia. Some could be, but not the majority. Our culture revolves around paranoid delusions. What psychiatrists look for in schizophrenia are beliefs that do not reflect the culture. For instance, in some cultures you have belief in an afterlife. Some might say it is a delusion, but if the majority in society believe it, it's not considered one. It's considered a cultural norm.
Christian theology is a good example. It is illogical to think someone could rise from the dead after being entombed for three days, however Christians believe this happened to Jesus and are not called delusional for believing it. However, someone who hears the voice of Jesus or thinks they are him might have a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

There must be at least one other symptom besides a delusion. Either another positive symptom or at least one negative.

Why not? At least a few read and post on this forum.

Others blog and write.

It used to freak me out, as well. But, I've kind of adopted a "If it happens, it happens. BRING IT ON, FATE!" attitude and life's been a little better. It's still an obsession of mine, though, given all the evidence suggesting that I might be somewhat likelier than the average person to develop it and I could be in the middle of developing it right now, with my increasing social oddness. (<---- Like that emoticon - doesn't that seem to be an odd emotion to express over something so disastrous? HAHA, yeah, I don't care. <-- another odd emotional affect, lol.)

Unfortunately, many people consider people on the spectrum to have a "thought disorder". We don't think like NTs, therefore our thinking is "disordered" according to them.

I can't count how many times people have called me "crazy", "coo-coo", "wack", and the like. It really works a number on my confidence in my own thought processes even though I know I'm not delusional nor do I have hallucinations.

My aunt has schizophrenia and she can never live on her own nor take care of herself. Since SZ has a genetic component, it terrifies me that I might get it, even though I'm supposedly past the age most people start showing symptoms. I think it's the absolute worst disease in the world to have. Not only do you lose the ability to think, it comes with a stigma that predisposes one to inhuman treatment, joblessness, homelessness, and loneliness.

I know what you mean, I have been called those things, too. I have no delusions or hallucinations, but am not thought of as completely sane either, lol. I do admit to paranoia, but everyone seems to be paranoid in their own way, so I chalk mine up to cultural norms. Mine is not any more paranoid than others around me, imo.
The thought disorder in schizophrenia might not be the same as ASD thought disorder, though.
Several conditions involving the CNS could result in thought disorder of some kind...

I have Aspergers and paranoid schizophrenia.

Pretty much my whole life, I have exhibited several negative symptoms of schizophrenia, because I'm autistic. When I was fifteen, I believed that the world was on the verge of being taken over by a centuries-old conspiracy whose plan would be reaching its end-game within the next few decades, and when I was eighteen I believed that some people were capable of devouring others souls through emotional exploitation. The "cures" for these two delusions were, respectively, turning sixteen and turning nineteen. So did I grow out of schizophrenia? Because I'd find that hard to believe.

Just thought I'd add, stilted language is also another symptom under the schizophrenia umbrella which is similar to Asperger's pedantic language use and rigidity.

It'd be interesting to get writing samples of schizophrenics. I'm getting the impression the only writings of schizophrenics I see online are the ones who are motivated to post online, which I don't think is every kind of schizophrenic. If I were battling monsters all day, I'd probably tend to that first before shooting the breeze online, and if the monsters never went away, I wouldn't have enough 'sane time' to post online.

Here's pretty interesting comparison between schizophasic and aphasic speech: http://www.ai.uga.edu/caspr/litreviewsr-published.pdf

A lot of the schizophasic speech's description seems to apply to me, far more than typical Aspergian language use.