Can Asperger's Syndrome be confused with Schizophrenia?

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Sounds like the concept of Karma.

It's more that he's of a 'higher order', a spirit separate from the physical manifestation of the body. That's not too uncommon. But it's that the voices are part of this interwoven fabric that's the difference and not just a manifestation in his mind, that may be because of some anxiety or whatever.

When I was 14 years old, I attended a psychologist because I was bullied a lot in school and because of bereavement of my mother at a young age. She wrote in a paper (which first came to my knowledge after I was at a hospital with depression [edit: 3 years ago, 29 years old], and they discussed afterwards that I might have AS), that she thought I was in danger of developing schizophrenia / psychosis.
That was in 1992, and AS wasn't a diagnosis at that time.
But if AS and schizophrenia can be confused, it makes sense that she guessed like that.
She never told me though. I think it was good, or else I would have been very shocked without any reason. I've never been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and am sure I've never had it, it was just AS all of it.

Last edited by AnnePande on 30 Oct 2010, 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

From what I have read and quizzing my therapist, Asperger's can be confused for schizophrenia. The is especially true if the aspie has built up alternate persona(s) to deal with certain situations.

I think that's confusing Madness [from pre AS days] with Asperger's.

AS people used to get diagnosed with Schizoid personalties, so it's possible misconceptions still remain.

If you look at the diagnosis criteria for Schizoid personalties, unless someone on the AS spectrum has a 'self delusion' type of psychosis. (basically got do into something that they convinced themselves is reality). I'd say most of the population has that problem though, so it has to be pretty weird for pass the diagnosis criteria.

Basically, if you know or even think your 'hallucinating' it's not a hallucination, but a psudohallucination.
If you think your deluded, you not.
If you think you have psychosis, you don't.
If you think the voices aren't real or just are just in your head, then that's not psychosis either.

Your shrinkage may vary.

I has having some difficult in understanding what you are saying.

Yes. The only one who is truly insane is the one who is unaware of same.

Isn't it possible to be diagnosed AS and schizophrenic simultaneously? Although that doesn't mean much, I guess, if you don't know the physicality of what's happening inside the brain.

I had a time where I thought I was schizophrenic (without being diagnosed) because I was hallucinating and having strange thoughts and all sorts of things that are too long to go on about. After awhile I stopped trying to find the difference between real things and figments of my mind. (You know, we can never REALLY tell the difference, anyway.)

All of this crap stopped when I took myself off of antidepressants, though. I'd been diagnosed bipolar a few years before, and because I'm -not- bipolar it caused some really weird things to happen inside my head. I can't find any information on the effects of antidepressants on a person who doesn't need them. For me, the result was much like schizophrenia, though.

I -am- AS, so now that I feel more "sane" I can say that although on the outside AS and schizophrenic symptoms have some similarities... on the inside, they are very, very different.

One issue is that of 'criminal insanity' vs 'clinical insanity'

Although criminal insanity isn't actually insanity per say.
It varies under different jurisdictions, but basically if you not 'guilty' your not 'guilty', based on having criminal intent.
In the UK you can be negligent.
But if you have good reason (I don't have excuses, I always use good reason), even it your actions are seen by the law as unlawful, then you are not of a guilty mind. (GOOD reason)

Also, until I know what someone wants and how to speak to them, I'll continuously adjust myself. So I'll present myself in all kinds of weird and wonderful ways.
If I've already prepared the answer to every question there going to ask (so very predictable they are), I can just hit them out before there even expecting it. Which can make me look manic.
And I can also have more than one conversation at once.

multiple-personalities is a very outdated view of 'maddness' but it still kicks around, and some of the more 'psychopathic' shrinks may have a moral agenda so med you up on dumb dumb pills because they see you in the old 'criminally insane' definition.

You are much more fluent here, but I do at least understand ... and I sometimes have to be careful about answering questions before one has even been asked!

That can really piss 'em off.

Last edited by leejosepho on 27 Oct 2010, 7:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think you only can have both diagnosis if the symptoms of AS appeared much before the symptoms of Schizophrenia.

What I really wanted to find was statisticals about the proportion of Aspies who, some years after, develop schizophrenia (I read somewhere that, for PDD/NOS the proportion is relatively high*). The internet is full of articles saying that the risk is the same that for "normal" people, but my impression is that the source of these articles are the paper of Lorna Wing about AS and a follow-up that Hans Asperger made of their former patients - studies made much before of the "democratization" of AS.

*what makes some sense, because schizoid personality disorder and pre-morbid schizophrenia, if appearing at a young age, are basically identical to PDD/NOS

I think one issue would be that there's no real definition of AS.
Typically people with AS don't attach themselves to things, on an extreme level.
NT people attach themselves to things a bit.
Scitziod people attach themselves that don't even really exist outside their heads.

But there is the notion of a sort of self created delusion, based in reality that's developed over a long period of time. kind of an augmented reality.
Feral children have a similar kind of reality augmentation.

I suppose in some way's I've been close to Feral for long periods due to isolating myself, so I could see how my reality may get augmented.

I've got a big log of back and forth conversation of my trying to understand why the other person doesn't understand English properly and is having difficulty understanding me and miss-attributing things.

Explaining what and why I'm doing it as I go along.

turned out she couldn't understand language in the third person and so misunderstood what I said, and then couldn't construct a response other than an 'assertion', which gave me nothing to go on, except that I should put things in a way that expressed the third person more.

she took things personally, that could have been anything that she attributed her person to.
so as an exaggeration,
I could have said that cat crap in other peoples gardens.
and she may reply.
'You hate cats'

That kind of thing drives be bug-nutty, and my wife sometimes tends to do that.

I try to give other people "Just the facts, Ma'am" either for their own sake or to help me try to sort them ... and then some of those other people somehow end up talking about me!

That makes absolutely no sense to me, and their "surprise analysis" of me while completely missing or ignoring the actual issue at hand can sometimes really piss me off.