Autism vs. Schizophrenia

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I could be wrong, but I think unless you actually have delusions or hallucinations, you don't have schizophrenia. I think schizophrenia is scary as hell-possibly the most scary disease I've ever heard of...but even so, medications for it are getting better and better from decade to decade. I know of a Doctor who has it, but is so functional he runs a hospital!

This is weird...my brother possibly had schizophrenia (or something close). He also had stuff what seems like (in retrospect) might be AS. The thing is though, I don't think he showed any signs of what looked like schizophrenia until after he had a bad seizure from a low blood sugar reaction (he had diabetes)...and my mom and I think he probably suffered from brain damage that might be the cause of his schizophrenia.

But...I wonder. Maybe the stuff that looking back seemed like AS WAS actually just also schizophrenia.

Just today I was reading about how abnormalities in the amygdale may be the cause of (or a symptom of) various conditions, including both autism/AS and schizophrenia. So I wonder if that's why they (and anxiety disorders, and bipolar, etc.) can have some symptoms that overlap, and possibly run in familes?

I've heard doctors in Japan what to get rid of that name too-and I think we should get rid of it, because most people don't understand what it is, or think it's multiple personality disorder. They don't realize the person with it is a victim, and it's nobody's fault.

What disturbs me is that "schizophrenia" is not always recognized as a valid defense when a person has committed a crime. I come from a county in California that notoriously criminalizes insane people, at the same time don't provide enough mental health services. So, there are dangerously ill people running around who aren't helped or contained, then when they commit a crime they are demonized. One (diagnosed) man's family called 911 when he was having a psychotic episode, the cops came and charged him with a crime yet didn't take him in to be evaluated or anything. His family was calling primarily to get him involuntarily held for mental health. The next day he heard voices and drove 100 mph down a 30 mph street, killing a young man. Despite his diagnosis, testimony and the previous 911 call, the prosecution got him convicted and said, "he knew right from wrong".
The case terrified a friend of mine because her dad was bipolar and while his meds stopped working, he was doing similar things. She had to fight to get him treated properly.
It's not just about money and social class either, but availability of professionals and specialists and the political environment of the community.

has anyone seen ahayes?

Schizophrenia is usually thought as just the psychosis and delusion that can occur but that is just half the picture. Often they can be brilliant creative people. One thing that struck me is how tiring it can be on them, and the antipsychotic don't help with that. They are similar to autistic they don't always want to be 'normal'.

It seems to me that AS the opposite of schizophrenia, scepticism and logic versus fanciful counter-factual ideas.

The psychologist that diagnosed me with AS, met John F. Nash in my university in 2005. He was there to give a lecture about an arcane area of mathematics. She introduced herself to him briefly spoke to him. "Gee, he is sooooo autistic." She said to me. Also, a female Aspie friend of mine who is a theoretical physicist went to his lecture. It was way too complicated for anyone to follow. Lots of people turned up to his lecture just because it was Nash talking. Out of the audience of 100 people, my friend said 10 people understood him.

Significantly, Nash now says that his equilibrium theory is wrong. He says that he failed to take into account peoples emotions. "People are emotional beings", he said on a TV documentary I saw 2 weeks ago.

I met a man with paranoid schizophrenia a few years ago. It very different from AS, I can’t believe that 45% of people with AS in three metal hospitals in the UK was misdiagnosed with Schizophrenia (only 10% had received a correct diagnosis of ASD).

In Ireland, where I live, the situation is worse but changing. Adult psychiatrists were not educated about autism at all, which was wrongly seen as a childhood condition, "Adults have schizophrenia - children have autism". When I sought a diagnosis of AS in 2000, the psychiatrist said, "You can't possibly be autistic, you can speak!" But thankfully thing are changing.

Someone mentioned brain damage as a possible precursor to schizophrenia, I find that interesting because my mom (who did have autistic traits growing up) did not "become" schizophrenic until she was a teenager, at which point she had sustained several concussions on separate occasions, and then an episode of Reye syndrome (brain swelling due to aspirin being given to a child or teenager when they have the flu).

I mostly fit the picture for AS, but I do tend to escape into a fantasy world sometimes, and on bad days my sense of logic is very messed up. On good days I have keener logic than most of my friends, to the point of irritating them by analyzing what they say too much. It's confusing. I also have a good friend who has strong autistic traits and was diagnosed (perhaps incorrectly) with AS, who has had psychotic episodes in times of extreme stress.

Did anyone actually look at the page I linked, though? It has a list of "early" signs of schizophrenia and most of them are traits that could come from AS. Could it be possible that a lot of schizophrenics started out with AS, and then their mental state deteriorated due to stress or other factors? Maybe that's why the "early signs" are similar...

Autistics do share fantasy element but these delusions are not over powering. It isn't the delusions and hallucination that define schizophrenia, they have these in other things like in bi-polar. It is how these symptoms present themselves.

We had a family member that sustained a massive head injury during WWII and came out "schizophrenic". And I had a friend back home who's son was hit by a car and later diagnosed as schizophrenic. That man, though, believed the car accident was a trigger and not necessarily the whole cause of his son's mental breakdown.

Autism was posited as a stage of Schizophrenia in 1912, long before Kanner is supposed to have invented the term, and while schizophrenia is a real disorder (deserving of tollerence) "autism" as it was earlier understood, is just a valid difference; a minority currently not reccognised as such!