schizoaffective resembling AS but not quite?

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Well, just as well she's an over achiever. If she did well at school then she's certainly got something about her that let her box above her weight.

Altruistic, Synaesthesia, mood disturbances, anxiety.

But, do you really really have to do some things for your self, and find it a bit odd when other people try to do them for you. There your things. (Psychosis predominant) 'You attach yourself to things'
Or do you just have a bit of a tantrum because someone has disrupted your train of thought and your in the middle of something. (Autistic) 'Although their are things that your really really intested in, and people piss you off a bit, a bit of help wouldn't go a miss, just the timing is bad'

For some reason the wording of that is a bit weird, but I would say that I don't care if people do things for me, but when I was a kid and sometimes as an adult too, I would have extreme fits over anything stressful, it triggers my symptoms too. I've even had shutdowns before. And also when I was a kid, it would be sudden change, that's even documented in my school psych reports. And yes, if I'm in the middle of doing something I don't like, I get upset.

hmm.. sounds more AS.
e.g. I tried to shut the lid of one friend laptop and he leaped across the room to try and stop me.
He's always me,me (if you don't ask you won't get x10) but also very altruistic.

Another has lots of ideas, but if you try to help him with them or give any suggestions, he goes mad, their my ideas. He can manage to write letters to try and get things off the ground but can't post them, I offered to post one for him and it was like I was taking his baby and selling it into slavery.
But, didn't really take offence, just super defensive. He's also very kind, truthful and altruistic.

All the people who I know (about 6) who have some amount of long term psychosis are like this. (Psychosis is attaching your 'self' [identity] to something 'very personal' , despite good evidence to the contrary).

'have extreme fits over anything stressful, it triggers my symptoms too. I've even had shutdowns before'
do a search on this site for mealtdowns.

Aspergers and probably autism to some degree used to be diagnosed as childhood schizophrenia.
The classic 'multiple personalties' fits in quite well with AS people adapting their personality to communicate [knowledge of mind over theory of mind] or having strong emotional personalties.

The two are very near identical in many ways, except Psychosis requires 'lack of insite' [e.g. you don't know that something isn't all in your head, illusion vs dillusion]
Anxiety can trigger quite similar symptoms too, possibly even in the general population, but defiantly in children.

But I think it can be some up as having things that are 'super personal' to your self identify vs things you get stuck into and problems task changing, acute senses and getting a bit pissed [well having a meltdown or snapping etc...] if your concentration/rythm/routine is broken.

bi-polar appears to be now something that anyone can get diagnosed with, probably as an excuse to try out the latest meds, or possibly because big pharma is just trying to make up new things that meds have some effect on people.

A-typical anti-psychotics (aka a bullet through the head) are the new Opiate,Benzidiazipam etc... Side effects and withdrawal are absolutely horrific, often once your on them and turned into a labotomized zombi you'll never get off, because they'll just say the withdrawl is a relpase of a condition you may never even have had, or a new condition.

Withdrawal is basically 8 months or so of illusions or psychosis or hallucinations etc... [sometimes a lot less, sometimes a lot more, sometimes not quite that extrem]

I know many people that I swear are just rebounding on the meds, but oh no their having a relapse...... [I've seen what they've been like when they've managed to kick the meds for a long time!]

Does withdrawal really take eight months?

well I was 5 years on, 1 year off now. Just about back to normal. A lot of post traumatic stress to deal with and possibly developing worse fibromalgya (which I started to get a side effect of the meds due to lowering of dopamine levels)

reports of 5-6 months of 'hard' rebound / withdrawal aren't too uncommon on some of the patient report sites.

I took a couple of months for the nasty stuff to kick in with me.

The real problem was that on the meds I was kind of 'deluded' as I couldn't think and didn't have any recognission of emotion at all, except in the extream.
e.g. spent best part of a year throwing up, crapping myself, wetting myself [urinating almost without any warning] and every couple to three weeks would be so bad,
I'd have to go to the loo in the middle of the night, and then just after got serious pain in my stomach and kept vomiting every 2 minutes or so, shivering, hot flushes, bent double on the floor, sipping water just so I had something to throw up, throwing up green bial.

Sometimes just getting really ill or flipping out completely.

All that lack of thought kind of got saved up, and because I couldn't think problems through at-all I believe that was the reason for having quite nasty post traumatic stress.

Had such a problem thinking that it took me 4 months to write about 3 paragraphs to the doctor in a letter to try and explain stuff. Like the most major ADHD you could ever imagine!

Because of the trust I'd placed in the Psyhietrist, and that I'd been reporting my side effects (as getting worse, or just new weird stuff) I had absolutely no idea it was the meds, or what the hell was happening. But in a thoughtless kind of deluded way (after 3-4 years of getting worse so completely lost sight of myself) thought I must have been like this for ever, but couldn't work out how, as I was sure I wasn't like it before, and the things I'd used to pick myself up weren't working as they used to.

Then thought, well I'll stop taking the meds, it can't hurt. and within a week it was apparent that it had been them all along, I could actually think and control myself again[in a haphazard way]

Basically hid from the Dr and Shrink though pretty much all of the withdrawal and rebound, they kept trying to put me back on them! Still are!

I think a bullet in the head would have been more comforting, and worked just as well if not better!


The weird bit was after many months when I started to realise that I was actually starting to think more normally again, and the things where getting much better.
Two weeks without any odd stuff, then it comes back again, another week ok, dam back again, am I going to be like this forever!

It has really given me a great appreciation of the more minor aspect of my emotive nature that for sure. Being able to remember more and more what I was like before the meds!

other meds have screwed me up big style in the past too, without me realizing it.

I'm never, ever, ever going to take anything that even gets close to having an effect on homoeostasis, and I'm going to pay serious attention to the effect the drug/medication is having on myself (now that I know myself so much more deeply!)

If it's a chemical imbalance then why the hell does talk/cognitive therapy work!

Deprogramming all the impulsive behaviour patterns that developed because I wasn't able to thing in a more fluid way, has also been quite a major task.


Personally I'd take my shrinks advice 'If it worked they'd be using them'.
I just didn't realise what she really meant was ,'If it worked, people with problems would be prepared to pay some guy in a dark alley way they don't even know their hard earned cash, with risk of imprisonment, for them'

I've been put on quetiapine and lamotrigine, and they really do seem to be working, though my sleep cycle is still completely upside down. I'm a bit concerned though, because the one day I couldn't take the quetiapine (had gastroenteritis and kept throwing up) the anxiety and insomnia were unbearable, and lying in bed with the light off I couldn't for the life of me get comfortable or lie still... it was like having thousands of ants running around my extremities, itching me to death.

Would that be a side effect?

(had gastroenteritis and kept throwing up), is your emotions coming out is a psychosymatic way. It only gets worse.

When you stopped, all that you've missed, and not realised and saved up started to come back again.

It's basically a chemical lobotomy.

have you per chance had any issues with 'stimulation' craving e.g. going out all the time when you didn't? drugs, food, driving faster than normal etc... possibly some kind of weird depressed lack of pleasure mood type thing you can't work out, not quite yourself. But you feel kind ok?


' it was like having thousands of ants running around my extremities, itching me to death.'

That's called Coke Bugs. After a little while it turns into dopamine psychosis!

As I said, people don't complain after having a bullet in the head either!

Somatisation is probably a better word than psychosomatic.


http://www.knowledgesutra.com/forums/to ... -problems/


http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictio ... matisation

Cocaine Bugs

http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/ ... aine_bugs/


Take a look at the 'ghosts' thread, I posted a some details of some more funky stuff!!

Believe me, I'm not going to post much about the seriously f****d up beyond belief stuff. Though I may start a thread for withdrawl and side effects for the panecia of lobotomy that are anti-psychotics.

Also look on wikipedia (possibly called neuolpeptics, or a-typical anti-psychotics, or under Scitzophrenia and under ADHD too)

Lost of good citations about what the big pharma are up to, how widely misused they are and how there is little if any real evidence in their favour, especially for any kind of long therm use, and defiantly not off script /off label.

They are seriously dangerous meds, being dished out like sugar candy, almost like trying to imprison and shut up the problems in society.

The UK government has just ordered that use of anti-psychotics in patients with dementia (which is totally off label) be reduced by at least 2/3, due to serious impacts on life expectancy and no apparent benefit to the now duelling patients at serious risk of stroke apart form to make them more 'manageable'.

i'm waiting at least 6 months maybe longer before filling in a yellow card report, since my shrink tried to put me in mental hospital.

When I held her to count, after refusing to see her 3-4 years or so ago due to lies on medical records [mine and other peoples], making up diagnosis, and generally being a bit of a psycho. She uttered the immortal words
'Oliver you don't appear to be you usually self'

That phrase only means one thing is coming up next!

"Altruistic, Synaesthesia, mood disturbances, anxiety." are all kind of common features between Schizo-affective and Autistic spectrum, though not everyone has all of them.

wording is odd because I've tried to over-emphasise things so that they seem beyond that of the usual that I expect most people would say yes too [both], and so to try and highlight the distinction.


Schizo-affective should mean, probably they you where diagnosed either bi-polar or Schizophrenic first and then at a later stage it was decided that you don't have both 'psychosis' and 'mood swings' together all of the time. so psychosis doesn't result in a mood swing and visa versa. But they are separate and distinct from each other at times.

Alternate diagnosis would be Autistic spectrum (Asperger's I would expect or the Autistic side would be more obvious [speech development for instance]) with ADHD (66% co-morbidity last place I looked).

I'm diagnosed with everything under the sun at the moment, well diagnosed schizo-affective and then a load of other made up stuff.
And got Asperges as a 'it's hard to diagnose', teat symptomatically (though there's nothing on script at all I believe as AS is screened from co-morbid drug trials due to odd responses).

If you know you had '/ have hallucinations or psychosis / paranoia (think your out of touch with reality) etc... then your not.
What you've got is illusions (synaesthesia basically) and anxiety. anxiety can cause illusions. (including hearing voices, seeing things coming at you, thinking the police are going to break down the door etc...)
Also AS are also good at spotting patterns in things, which is sometimes just a 'random cluster' that looks like it may be a real occurrence of something not spoken about.


bi-polar covers so much now a-days, I suppose the main distinction between bi-polar and ADHD is how you where as a child (say from 1 up to 12-13)

You could probably get diagnosed with bi-polar due to the up and down effects on mood of caffeine in coffee!

I think, but I'm not sure, but bi-polar doesn't have strong environmental links to it, only weak ones.
Classic bi-polar racing thoughts should seem over-layed like they are one on top of each other.
ADHD is more like a stream of thoughts distracting you from one thing to another [possibly on a longinsh cycle too, or often with me in the region 20-30 things a day], with boredom, and goes away or get's better if your doing something your really interested in.
Lots of good ideas in good times, lots of suicidal or otherwise ideas in bad times. Get things started but never really manage to finish them. Sleeping problems.

There's also innatentive version usually called ADD to distinguish, and a mixed version.
innatentive people have really really bad memories (at least the ones I've met) but they don't seem to realise that unless it's pointed out to them in black and white over a long period of time.
My ex boss would come up with the same idea about every 3 weeks, come running in, try to get everyone working on it right away.
We'd all then explain to him why it's not feasible, like really really not feasible. He'd accept this, and not mention it.
Then 3 weeks later, bang back on the same thing again.
(This went on for at least 5 maybe 10 years!)
You could explain something to him, he'd get it perfectly, follow the argument and contradictions, agree whole heartedly (even get the cheque book out sometimes), next week it was like you'd never spoken to him.
I've left now!

I think clinical depression has to last longer than 2 months [maybe 2 weeks?], clinical mania 3 weeks unless hospitalization is required.

Side effects and withdrawal from SSRIs and probably other anti-depressants can mimic both (and appear like psychosis too)

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclothymia is the catch all.

hypomania symptoms are listed as things as common as impulsive purchases.

god only knows what 'mild depressive' is! PMT possibly?

I get lots of different strong emotions, not really reaching mild mania (less on Prozak etc.. for a couple of weeks+ )
Only time I can remeber being really really depressed was when the Dr said try taking a rispiridodne (anti-psychotic) after I'd stopped taking them for a while. It really gave depression a name, but only lasted for a day.

Generally lots of anxiety in different forms, really really fuming angry but with nothing to direct it at, really really loved up, some weird emotions that I can't even being to describe. Once something like a 'must go and warn everyone, alert emotion going on', sometimes just burst into tears and other stuff.

usually quite short lived though, but a bit like doing some really funky hard core drugs.

Well basically when I first had delusions, I did believe the weird things that were not true, so that was true delusion. The meds do have side-effects and actually it is true that I think less clearly, and it was horrible when I tried to stop taking them, but I believe I'm better off on them than off because of the mood swings and delusions.

Some stuff about me is really not AS though, like I can read faces and I make excellent eye contact. I have bad social skills despite having these skills.

"Well basically when I first had delusions, I did believe the weird things that were not true"

Umm... That's not a true delusion, you weren't deluded into the truth of the things?

I someone calls my name in the street and then I turn (thinking they've called me) but find out it's not anyone I know.
I wasn't deluded when I thought that they where calling me, because when I found out they weren't I realised the truth.

In a similar vain, you could notice all kind of weird stuff and pattern (which may or may not be real, but random events have clusters in them).
So you may notice that certain Adverts are shown on TV during certain types of things, and that a 'subliminal' underline theme or pattern seems to be trying to convey something more than just a single add on it's own.

You may be totally convinced of this, and it may or may not be true.
But if months, or even years later someone show you it's not true, and then you take a few months or so thinking about it, and realise that it wasn't true.
That's not a true delusion, even though you may have believed it for years, the key think is that your adjusted your position or altered your belief after your mind was initially made up on the event of new information.