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Some of your responses are interesting. Years ago, when we learned all our stuff on autism, there was no ASD. At the time, they said that 4/5ths of autistic were basically non-verbal. They broke out those with milder disfunction as having Asbergers. These were the folks that had mild problems, like the social interaction problems.
Trust me, "Rain Man" is not some kind of Hollywood fiction. My son lives it every day. Not exactly the same, not with all the same problems, but very much the same. I think this is why we are having problems with the medical/psychological system. He falls into a gap between the very severely handicapped non verbal autistic, and the more mild cases that have mostly milder problems.
Thank you coschristi. That's the kind of info I was looking for. I figured there must be some link, because my brother is seeing the same kind of paranoia and delusions in his son that we are seeing our son. And it's not hereditary, because my brothers son is adopted. And my son's behavior is gradually deteriorating, his condition is not stable but progressing.
Paranoia and delusions are not symptoms of autism.
Have you contacted you community services board or Department of Aging and Rehabilitation? They would provide services and help you with services for your son. My son is very high functioning and he still receives support from them.
So I have the relative with the schizo affective stuff. I also have many close acquaintances who are adults with autism. The challenges that my relative faces, and the challenges that my acquaintances face, are not the same. And what I have seen of autism bears no resemblance to "Rain Man" so I don't even think of that as anything but Hollywood. Most of the autistic adults I know have figured out how to live alright with it, but they do struggle mostly in the social department. It's hard to comfortably interact when you do not understand social cues, and when you feel like everyone else is speaking in a secret language of nuance and hints and body language that your mind doesn't readily pick up on or process.
And autism is a really broad spectrum, from people who just have the difficulties I describe above, all the way to some who have concurrent other issues or extreme effects, I have not met any autistic adults who are non-verbal, though I know that speech delays in autistic children are common, for instance. I'm sure that many have more extreme effects than what I have seen.
The thing about that, is like many other challenges folks face, the more challenged one is the less likely they are to be seen, especially as adults, for largely practical reasons. An adult that has severe autism is likely to be in a group home type environment. I did meet a few such folks in college doing some volunteer work.
The savant/card counting thing is largely Hollywood but it does happen.
The thing about that, is like many other challenges folks face, the more challenged one is the less likely they are to be seen, especially as adults, for largely practical reasons. An adult that has severe autism is likely to be in a group home type environment. I did meet a few such folks in college doing some volunteer work.
The savant/card counting thing is largely Hollywood but it does happen.
I teach students with autism. I once had a student who you could give a past date and he could tell you what day of the week it was. He is what would be considered level 2 autism.
ETA: I believe I’ve read that true savants make up less than 1% of the population, but I’ll look it up. I know true savants are exceptionally rare.
Last edited by Spazkat9696; 11-02-2021 at 03:28 PM..
Any of you folks have expertise other than your own imagination and what you found in a Google search? As to what behaviors, go and read a list of typical behaviors for people with schizophrenia. My son has all of them.
So to better refine the question. Are you acquainted with people with autism type symptoms still in adulthood, like Dustin Hoffman's "Raymond", but no symptoms of schizophrenia.
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Originally Posted by Iluvbeagles
Excuse me, but some of us are medical professionals. I’m a R.N. who worked with psych patients. I didn’t google my answer.
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Originally Posted by reneeh63
Great - you stated your personal experience with your son but never mentioned being an R.N. - it would help if you had gave all of your expertise in your first post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iluvbeagles
I didn’t say anything about my son in my post. My children don’t have schizophrenia or autism. So I can’t speak from that kind of experience. You must have me mixed up with someone else. All I said was that schizophrenia manifests in early adulthood.
Sorry, you're right - I was looking back at someone else's posts.
...and just the same there's no reason to take personal offense at someone else's assumption of lack of qualifications if you haven't declared your own.
Autism & Schizophrenia & Alzheimer's are all caused by the same thing; the symptoms displayed are dependant on what developmental stage their brain is in.
In Autism, an atypical immune response at age 2 has impaired the microglia cells & they fail to preform synaptic pruning during the explosive synaptic growth phase. When this happens, the new, learning based synapses don't have anywhere to 'plug' in to, because the microglia never trimmed the old ones away.
They overgrow & crosswire, causing an autistic child's brain to have 50% more synapses by age 5, than normal. Imagine if you had 50% more synapses translating light or sound ... You would probably be hypersensory & retreat too.
Now, Schizophrenia; during late adolescence or adulthood, the Microglia cells "over-prune" & the brain actually starts to shrink. Autistic people's brains may begin to shrink in adulthood as well, but I think the studies may be picking up psychotropic use impacts, as antipsychotics can cause brain shrinkage.
Microglia are the brain's immune cells. Autism, Schizophrenia & Alzheimer's are all immune mediated.
The immune-mediated "bridge" between autism & schizophrenia:
I received a bizarre LinkedIn message from a former coworker yesterday who is very public with his autism/Asperger's diagnoses. I sent him an automated "Congrats on your work anniversary" message six weeks or so ago. I didn't hear back, and didn't think more of it. We were friendly and had some common interests, but were never very close personally.
He sent me back a long screed saying "sorry, but I don't feel that we can be connected because of your passions outside of work. You know the ones (hell if I do know). I know some are just moneymakers for you, but I don't believe in "S" and "WP" and think they are a toxic scourge on society." There were some other details of a personal nature in there that let me know he was talking about me - otherwise, I would have thought he sent it to the wrong person.
It was fairly common knowledge that I slept with a female coworker there after she left the company. I'm guessing that was the "S". "WP" might be "workplace politics." I don't know.
He would take hour long smoke breaks and walk around the office park while the rest of the team was utterly swamped. We reported to an offsite manager, and the rest of us finally had enough of his antics. He wouldn't straighten up and got fired. He was 23 - young and dumb, it happens.
He also posted a bizarre public facing post that "some people you meet in your career will do anything to get ahead of you." It was a snip of a private message he'd sent someone else, saying that they tried to get him fired over ticket production, that someone else got a promotion, how it set his career back five to seven years.
He's always had some issues, but is generally a nice guy. It sounds like he's become unhinged.
We have a 40 yr old autistic child, who was finally diagnosed after 1st grade. (Schools were not so clued in in those days. He made through HS and actually held a job in a movie theater as an usher for 10 years. He is not retarded, and actually has a great memory, so most have considered him a kind of autistic savant, which is possible as even in child, he displayed an unusual ability to remember dates, historical facts, facts about movies and music He was interested in. But in the last 5 years, his behavior has become increasingly bizarre. I now think this may have progressed to schizophrenia. He has the classic symptoms. I'm starting to wonder if what we saw in his youth was the early beginnings of schizophrenia.
My brother has an adopted autistic son who is displaying different but similarly weird symptoms. Has anyone else this forum had similar experience or knowledge about this phenomena?
My husband has a relative who was diagnosed with autism as a child, and schizophrenia as an adult. He is on meds for the schizophrenia, if he doesn't take them he really goes off the rails. His doc did say schizophrenia is more common in autistic people than in the general population. Perhaps your son also has both conditions.
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