autistic catatonia? violence?

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read this:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/0 ... index.html

and then this:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/0 ... index.html

What do you think? Was it the drugs? Was it the autism? The combination? Does anyone have any first-hand knowledge of the drugs mentioned, and can anyone provide a pov similar to the son's?

Something similiar has happened to me twice. At age 16 and 3 months ago. My pervasive desorders of when I was a child returned, stimming all the time, echolalia, and yeah catatonia. I did not become that violent though.

Did you get better? And did what showed on the outside accurately reflect your mental state? If you got better, how?

I find this quite frankly terrifying, although I'm old enough now to probably be past the danger of it.

For those with Autistic Disorder, there's a 50% chance that around 13 to 18 their symptoms will come back in full force, like they were when a child. Most with Autism tend to improve up until puberty..., and then, it can come screaming back. This is something that doesn't appear to happen with Asperger's (however, individuals with Asperger's can be aggressive).

It happened to me, but I'm not an aggressive person.

Some children with Autism are aggressive, and there's nothing saying they can't be when they're older, especially if their symptoms come back in a severe way; frustration and trying to cope with such a severe disability can make people just "crack".

I wonder how much of this has to do with intelligence? My thoughts are that it would be less likely in those with some mental retardation because of the lack of understanding of how they are different...kind of like not knowing what they are missing giving them less reason to be frustrated about it...any thoughts on that?

having read the 1st of the two links I wanted to recommend that you check out a piece by James Ridgeway on AJE on how american pharmacitical companies have pushed the overperscription of what had been a med of last resort
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/op ... 79987.html

a bit off topic but I think you share the authors take on big pharma

From "Catatonia in autistic spectrum disorders," by Wing & Shah.

to return to the topic at hand the transition from one role in life (childhood) to a new one as an adult is difficult for everyone. For a person who has an ASD this is compounded many times over. It is a common discription to say that symptoms get worse or return around this point in life. I would contend that the symptoms are a response to a new set of challenges that come up realativly quickly and not having the skills to deal with them yet. (There are far more services to help children with an ASD learn to cope with being children with an ASD than there are that address the unique needs of an adult with an ASD and how to cope in the world.
This creates a great deal of frustration, as a teenager I drove my parents car through the back wall of thier garage, punched out windows, put holes in the walls, in short I pushed my parents to the point that they had to call the police on several occasions.
For me the turn around from being violent in response to the inner tension I felt had little to do with any approved therapies. I had taken several tabs of strong blotter, what I had planned as a recreational venture became instead a hell of introspection, being forced for the 1st time in my life to see myself from the outside. To put it bluntly the person that I saw bore no resembalence to who I thought I was. I had always been able to look at my actions knowing my intentions, knowing my hurt, what I felt, I had not considered the effects that my actions had on others, I just kinda expected them to psychicly know the why behind things i did.

since then I have lost my temper and had an outburst on maybe a halfdozen occasions in 17 or so years. I wouldn't say that what helped me through this would work for anyone else.

The paper by Shah & Wing, mentions loss of structure, such as the end of schooling, loss of employment, or breavement, as possible factors. Though, I think it also needs to be remembered that it's not necessarily a purely psychological thing. I.e. people with Parkinson's (and other conditions) can develop the symptoms of catatonia for neurological reasons (though mood disorders are the most common cause). And interestingly, the drugs given to the guy in the above story basically mimic the effects of Parkinson's in the brain. And I'm vaguely aware of at least 2 people for whom it sounds like catatonia much more of a 'physical' problem than a problem of overwhelming psychological stress in the present (though huge stress the past + neuroleptic drugs were likely factors in setting that off or accelerating it).

I think people can get hit at least 5 ways at once in adolescence: change in structure/role/expectations, changes in those around the person, hormones, neurological pre-disposition (to catatonia), and possibly neuroleptic drugs.

I don't know if it was specifically due to hormones, but at 16 I had some intensely hellish OCDish symptoms (intrusive thoughts), and massive anxiety -- more than ever in my life. And it was at the worst possible social time, as I was just becoming aware of how 'off' I was, and other kids were taking off like rockets, in terms of social sophistication.

By the time I was 20, though, the OCDish stuff mysteriously faded away, and the anxiety dropped quite a bit. Being in a better environment (out of high school) was part of it, but another big part of it did seem chemical/hormonal. At least I didn't have anyone declaring me psychotic and shoving pills down my throat (though if I'd talked to wrong shrink, given some of the weird thoughts I had at the time, maybe I would've. Luckily, I was never violent, but was probably never closer to it than then.)

As for the guy in the article, I think he had all of those factors hitting him at the same time, and the drugs were like gasoline on a fire. Scariest thing I've ever read is someone noting that if you have autistic catatonia, and get misdiagnosed as having catatonic schizophrenia, they'll keep giving you with more and more of those drugs which make it worse, until you're "locked-in." At that point, they will use that as proof that you are in fact a catatonic schizophrenic, and will keep giving you those drugs so that you end up locked-in forever.

My son's doctor is "guessing" he has catatonia. My son has little language and what he does have is mostly echollia. He used to answer some questions but it has always been a struggle to get a response, we fought for years to bring out of him what we could and he was doing fairly well, reading on a 2nd grade level, communicating his wants and had several hobbies like drawing, computer, video games and enjoyed Disney movies. But little by little it all went away. I didn't notice at first because it was such small changes that I just thought he had lost interest, which was not unusual because he has always had a habit of picking up one hobby and dropping another. But when it finally dawned on me that something was wrong was when he would sit for an hour or more without making a sound; when he had always been quite vocal which actually kept us from going places because the sounds he would make would draw so much attention. It has been quite difficult and heartbreaking to watch him "disappear" Although he has always been far from "normal" I was happy to see that he had interests that seemed to bring him joy. Knowing that he will always be in our care I am happy for him just to have interests to occupy his time. When he was at his worst he would sit almost motionless all day, not even going to the bathroom unless being told to and then we would have to stand there and tell him every step to take in order for him to actually get it done (pull your pants down, pee, pull your pants up, etc.) But he is taking Lorazepam now (4 mg 3 times a day) and is doing much better. Although he is not completely back to normal, he is close. When I had first noticed this extreme calmness I took him off all the medications that he had been on for many years now thinking that he surely didn't need them if he was so calm now, then after he was off all medication and he remained calm it didn't occur to me that the calmness was really a problem until he just stopped doing anything! I have been so frustrated by this because my son is 16, I have been to many workshops, trainings and conferences on Autism and never have I ever even heard of Catatonia! Since this is such a devastating symptom, why is it not talked about? I kept speaking to the doctor about "Prompt dependency" which is brought up quite often but she assured me that there is a difference and I came to believe he when I witness first hand the devastation this brought upon my son. He was completely devoid of all emotions when this was at its worst.

I think they have something on top of what we call autism.

to sconnie
have they assessed him for seizure activity. There is damn little known about regression (particularly in childhood) but what is out there frequently points to damnage being caused by sezure. (rates of convulsive d/o are much higher in the ASD population, and I spend my work days with a gentlmen who regressed from being verbal to effectivly nonverbal after a sezure)
This need not be something that you would see visually, sezures often take the form of freezing up or just being gone for a minute or ten, if they haven't been ruled out, make sure that they are looked into.

I think that some of the aspects often described as catatonia are better described by either of 2 things, 1) learned helplessness (ie you stop trying in general) or 2) that the internal experince is so overwhelming that the outside world no longer is you main reality,

I can't say that I really know,

The first thing they did was check brain activity. They had wanted to do that years ago but he was so hard to handle when he was younger that i knew it would be all out war to get it done, so I said no. Now he will pretty much let you do anything without objection, eats things too that he used to wouldn't dream of touching. It is definitely better for our family, his calmness but I just want to make sure whatever is going on is not something terrible in the end. This week in particular he has been in very good spirits, I contacted his doctor wondering if we should just be satisfied where we are and stop the increases in dosing and she wants to see him again so she can observe herself. He is a teenager after all now, so some of these changes could be related to age.

I don't know if it is really the case or not, about why "autistic catatonia" is so little-known, but maybe catatonia is so strongly linked to schizophrenia in doctors' minds that ASD people/kids who showed catatonic symptoms were re-diagnosed as schizophrenic. So, there effectively weren't any autistic catatonics, as far as anyone knew.

...Just did some googling. According to the DSM-IV, catatonia is associated with a number of conditions, but autism isn't one of them. So, there's one problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatonia

...And, catatonia was listed as a type of schizophrenia in every DSM version prior to DSM-IV. IOW, in all of them since 1952. So, the idea of "autistic catatonia" really is something new. And it looks like there is a lot of (incorrect) historical momentum going against it. I know I've read journal articles, where no matter how carefully the authors made sure to rule out schizophrenia, there are still letters that ask "are you sure it's not really schizophrenia?"

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7486/is_20090

Good point!

I would think the meds would have something to do with "Serious" or "Severe Side Effects", it also puts stress on the body that can also do harm too, from a certian stand point, back in the days when Mental Asylums were around and no Medication was avalible, I figure this is where this violence only depended on the person who had a more severe form of Autism/Aspergers, currently it seems now with Autism Research at it's speak, there are different forms of this,

So far I have herd over on Facebook with the Autism groups there that recently there has been a rise on violent Autistic people(Aspies included), and recently I guess Deadly force has been taken Action more lately with Law Enforcement because people with more higher functioning Autism or radical versions of Autism have been reported as of late, so far only 1 case turned up due to usage of drugs I guess.