Woodpecker wrote:
Rather than just provide the links, please could you give your view on the two papers.
I think it's worth to read at least pages 6-7 of the latter. Studies, research and science apart, I believe that the two basic conditions overlap fairly. My personal opinion is that milder or subclinical forms of schizophrenic traits go unnoticed in a much larger proportion of ASD people than indicated in the latter paper. The paper reflects only those appearing at psychiatric settings. Children and young adults with an ASD diagnosis might never go to a psychiatric clinic because they are treated at ASD-specific services (the mentioned "split"). On the other hand, according to the latter paper almost in all cases a co-morbid ASD is present in people diagnosed with an SPD. Furthermore, when mood is relatively stable (no depressive, manic phases) and psychotic symptoms are present (besides ASD), usually an SPD diagnosis is given, not ASD, due to the diagnostic systems they use (DSM IV-TR and ICD-10).
Quote:
The prevalence of delusions, hallucinations, and thought disorder in this sample is surprisingly high for ASDs. This may depend on the specific clinical settings where this study was performed, as it is more likely that more severely impaired patients with ASDs were admitted to this setting, compared to those attending centers for autism and developmental disorders. Regarding this aspect, one important caveat should be discussed. Diagnosing delusions in patients with ASD is difficult, because the often reported bizarre, absurd, repetitive and narrowly focused, ideas resemble, but are not qualitatively identical, to the typical delusions of psychotic disorders (Raja & Azzoni 2007). Furthermore, patients’ poor social judgment and theory-of-mind skills may suggest paranoid delusions (Deprey & Ozonoff 2009). Imagination and originality are common in AS (Frith 2004). Some patients with AS are able to coin original verbal expressions and to create imaginary worlds in words and pictures. They may also engage in extensive and wide-ranging imaginary activities or be particularly able to produce creative narratives (Frith 2004). To an inexperienced clinician’s eyes, those symptoms could be misdiagnosed as delusions. Similarly, the presence of disorganized thought in patients with ASDs is sometimes erroneously inferred due to the lack of reciprocity, presence of poor ability to maintain the main conversations topic, pedantic, idiosyncratic, and bizarre speech, which are quite different from the disorganized speech of patients with schizophrenia, but may be so inadequate to resemble tangentiality, incoherence, illogicality, and circumstantiality, therefore prompting for being detected as disorganized thoughts. However, in our experience, the detection of hallucinations is much easier and reliable since there is less ambiguity in patients’ report. Therefore, we are confident that “true” psychotic symptoms were present in our patients.
I just discovered that one of the typical schizophrenic traits, 'reference' could also apply to me, according to Wikipedia's definition of 'Ideas of reference and delusions of reference'.
28 Dec 2013, 4:51 pm
