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Old Jun 02, 2010, 12:55 PM
Callista Callista is offline
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Member Since: Feb 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 218
Yeah, that's frustrating. When you've got schizophrenia/schizoaffective/schizoid/schizotypal/etc. going on, it complicates diagnosis pretty badly, because what's required for a combined autism/schizo-whatever diagnosis is that the autistic traits be present in childhood, before onset. And, of course, you've already got schizoaffective disorder, which makes the problem quite complicated both for you and for anyone trying to figure out diagnostic labels.

Okay, so here's a proposal: Talk to your shrink; tell them about your childhood memories of being in social-skills groups, and delayed on social skills, and your suspicion that you might have had an autism spectrum disorder before the onset of your schizoaffective disorder. Mention that you would like to take advantage of social-skills training--which is useful not just for Asperger's but for other disorders as well, including schizophrenia-type problems that involve social isolation. If your shrink will make a note in your record that you have autistic-like traits but the diagnosis can't be determined because you also have schizoaffective disorder complicating the picture, then maybe you can go about addressing individual problems without worrying about pinning the diagnosis down exactly.