Autism & Schizophrenia.

Post Reply New Topic

Is it possible to have both autism and schizophrenia. In 2020 I was diagnosed with autism as well as social anxiety disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, ocd, general anxiety disorder as well as being diagnosed with adhd and depression in my teenage years. When ever I'm around people I always believe that theyre talking about me and I dont do well with conflict and when I hear someone raise their voices I have to plug my ears or go into a different room because it stresses me out but even after it ends and I unplug my ears it takes me a few minutes to realize no one is talking anymore and I still think I hear them talking right after I unplug my ears. In high school i had like a schizophrenic break and thought I was hearing my parents arguing and they left but it wasn't true; but I had taken a higher dosage of my aderall then i was supposed to and thought that was what cause it. Now, though I wonder if I really do have schizophrenia and it wasn't just the adderall that caused that break.

Autism and Schizophrenia have quite a few symptoms that overlap. It is possible to have both, but its thought to be extremely rare. I don't think a larger than normal dose of Adderall would cause a "break" (I've often forgotten whether or not I've taken mine and accidentally double-dosed), and it did increase my anxiety and caused sleeplessness but its wasn't anything severe.

Having said that, everyone reacts differently to medication You own experience will probably vary.

I have both schizophrenia/schizoaffective ( the pdoc chops on that) and ASD(Asperger's). I've had the severe mental illness since 1975.
The ASD DX since 2019.

My daughter believes that the ASD is primary , and the severe mental illness due to the stresses of having been an undiagnosed autistic person.

The first person who ever diagnosed me with anything was someone I went to high school with (same graduating class) who was a psychology major in college, though they never went beyond a bachelors. They diagnosed me as schizotypal. I only more recently learned there's a lot of symptom overlap between that and autism, but from different underlying causes. That was the first person to recognize my autism, but they didn't realize what they were looking at because of how poorly autism was understood twenty years ago.