ASD and schizotypal -overlap and differences ?

At my last meeting with the Nurse practitioner at my old address she mentioned autism in relation to things I told her and gave me a sheet about a local autism charity. However she also said that things might be explained by schizotypal.

I am wondering what people think about the overlap and differences between ASD and schizotypal. How many have gone in for an ASD assessment to be told they are schizotypal? How many are seen as being both ASD and schizotypal ?

  • My personal experience is that I was diagnosed with ASD only. This was after a very thorough assessment carried out by a number of professionals including a psychiatrist. This leads me to believe that schizotypal was never a possibility. Other possibilities were mentioned and explored like OCD but not schizotypal. The conclusion I draw from this is that not all people with ASD meet the criteria for schizotypal. Having read the criteria I would agree that I do not meet the criteria for schizotypal but that I definitely meet the criteria for ASD.

  • no idea, but i score zero on the AQ test and i score highly on two of the five schizophrenia areas. The main overlap with autism here is disorganised thinking, which is the emotional and mental component of dyspraxia, which if you have autism is just part of your autism but not everyone with autism has it. (It's about having organisation in the diagnostic handbook, essential for preventing random meaningless diagnoses, not about making sense). Only overlap i know of, am otherwise ignorant

  • Autism and schizophrenia are related.

    Before autism became recognised, it was often diagnosed as schizophrenia.

    There are however many differences and anti psychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenics can make autism worse.

    However some unlucky people can have symptoms of both.

    As a student in the 1980s I once lived in a shared house where one of the residents was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.  And her behaviour was challenging.  When I first moved in I asked about local shops and she offered to show me where the nearest large supermarket was.  At around 3pm in the afternoon we went shopping to this supermarket.  2 minutes into the journey she started shouting about the trees, panicked and ran back into the house.  Once she came round in the middle of the night asking for antiseptic, plasters and cotton wool.  Her feet had cuts and scratches and were bleeding.  It turned out that she couldn't sleep so she went out for an after midnight walk in her bare feet, with only a jacket over her underwear.