ADD + Schizoid PD = Asperger's?

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if a person has received diagnoses of ADD and Schizoid personality disorder, from different doctors, does it mean they are pretty much aspies?

No. It means they have Schizoid PD and ADHD. ADHD isn't specifically a component of autism (although it's often a comorbid with ASDs).

SPD and/or ADHD may be misdiagnoses, however, and you may actually have an ASD instead.

Is Schizoid Personality Disorder the same as split personality, which many people, WRONGLY, think is what Schizophrenia is?

Schizoid PD was once upon a time considered the same thing as Asperger's. Then it was discovered that one condition is a personality problem and the other a neurological condition.

Schizoid PD shares some traits with Schizophrenia, such as social withdrawal, anhedonia, lack of interests, etc. However, Schizoid PD does not come with delusions and hallucinations.

According to the DSM IV, these are the criteria for Schizoid PD:

neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family
almost always chooses solitary activities
has little, if any, interest in having sexual experiences with another person
takes pleasure in few, if any, activities
lacks close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others
shows emotional coldness, detachment, or flattened affect

No, that was multiple personality disorder, but is now called dissociative identity disorder.



Schizoid PD came first decades earlier and has never been considered the same thing as AS, although many people who would be diagnosed with AS have been diagnosed as SPD in the past, especially before there was an AS diagnosis, and while the criteria excludes having both, some people have been diagnosed with both.

Right. however, once upon a time, if I am not mistaken, people with Schizoid PD and people with Asperger's would have been diagnosed with Schizoid PD.

No. There is nothing in an AS diagnosis that indicates attention problems the come with ADD or the paranoia that comes with schizoid personality disorder.

But people with ADD and people with Asperger's often have one thing in common: verbal IQ much higher than nonverbal IQ or viceversa.

Paranoia "doesn't come" with Schizoid PD, but sometimes Paranoid PD and Schizoid PD co-occur.

Speaking of paranoia, it seems that many aspies have paranoid tendencies themselves. Not saying they are to blame, since it's hard not to be paranoid when you get socially conditioned to expect ill treatment from people.

Interestingly a therapist suggested I had schizoid personality disorder.

I went home and looked it up. I never went back to that therapist again.

But I can see how the symptoms might come across that way.

No you are thinking of DID or Dissassociative Identidy Disorder(that may be spelled wrong) formerly known as multiple personality disorder. But yes I have seen people mistake that for schizophrenia. I mean its possible the two could exist in someone at the same time but they certainly are not the same thing.

Well except a lot of people with AS process things a bit slower sometimes, which might make them come off as in-attentive.

I come across as even more inattentive than someone with ADHD when my brain shuts down from sensory overload. In my former therapy group, there was a woman with ADHD, and she commented on how extremely inattentive I appeared to be compared to her. So AS in certain situations can look like severe inattentive ADHD on the outside. But I'm guessing that what's going on inside is very different in the two cases.

I think that, if you have Schizoid PD, it is almost sure that you will have something like "ADD-I" as a bonus - after all, if your life runs around your thought and fantasies and if you don't have interest in most external, "real-world", activities, you will be inattentive almost by definition.

If anything, some studies has sugested the extreme distractibility of schizoids as a criteria for differentiating SPD from ASD.

No.

You may seem similar in demeanor but if you don't have the same set of positive traits that also go along with AS, it's not the same thing.

I was nearly DXed with SPD instead of Aspergers.

I'm naturally laconic, I under-react to most situations, and I primarily live in my head. When I'm depressed or in "shutdown mode" I come across as even more distant and aloof. However, I have enough traits that my psychologist felt confident that AS was a better fit.

I suspect that "imploding Aspies" are more likely to present as Schizoid, especially when depressed.

As I understand it, schizoids don't necessarily have anything wrong with social skills per se (and more often don't). They just want to be left alone.