All 4 are intelligent, and 3 are extremely so. All 4 are quite articulate – none with any problem speaking. None have disorganized thinking.

All paranoia they have have come from voices and other perceptions. My own child’s psychiatrist initially had me read all about autism because there was so much overlap. But she is very socially aware.

She remains quite analytical and rational. In fact all have been very “sane” in their reactions to very distorted perceptions. If I had experienced what their brains experienced I myself would probably have reacted the same way and came to the same conclusions. I amend that – I am not sure I would have had the mental HEALTH my own child had to have remained “sane”, and she has.

Perhaps one form of schizophrenia IS, as you hypothesize, a manifestation of a problem on the opposite end of the spectrum from autism.

Other forms, are simply sensory/hallucinatory/mood/psychtic/perceptual symptoms arising from various areas of the brain – different areas in different people with different underlying etyiologies. In my child’s case, her hypothalamus is affected which causes not just symptoms of “schizophrenia” but a host of other neurological and endocrinological problems. Other people’s “schizophrenia” are more frontal cortex. And the list goes on.

Sorry if I am saying anything I should not. You can blame it on my own autistic-spectrum traits (forgive me if I do not consider it a “disorder”).

Thanks for commenting. I believe that the communicative problems and social ineptitude are traits that appear to be common to schizophrenia and autism, on surface; but I also believe that the underlying causes and mechanisms are very different.

I agree though that schizophrenia is a very broad term and my posts clubbing schizophrenics at one end and Autistics on other end may not apply to all the people who are now classified as ‘Schizophrenics’. Delusions, though not necessary in all forms of the illness, are one of the prominent positive symptoms on the basis of which diagnosis is made. Disorganized behavior, thinking and speech is another prominent diagnostic criteria, clubbed under cognitive symptoms. Also prominent diagnostic criteria are negative symptoms like alogia, avolition etc. These diversity of diagnostic criteria , itself is testimony to the fact, that this is a spectrum disorder.

Also, I didn’t mean to say that all people (children) diagnosed with schizophrenia lie; but my contention is that they may start confabulating earlier as their theory-of-mind module may develop earlier. In adulthood though,they may have a greater ability to deceive(sometimes using symbolic language and gestures), yet they may not necessarily use that ability to confabulate.

I know that people with schizophrenia have sensory gating problems and do interpret ‘input’ wrongly; but that doesn’t exclude the possibility of paranoia arising from an advanced and dominant theory-of-module/ deception detection module.

Yet, all this is conjecture, but I believe these claims/ theorization can be tested using adequate experiments / longitudinal studies.

Another is that many people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia-related disorders do not have a problem with speech or disorganized thinking, a belief in thought broadcasting, mind-reading, etc. The daugnosis is so broad that there are probably 50 different illnesses getting lumped together under that diagnositic label. In fact, many cases of hypothyroid and hyperthyroid still get diagnosed as schizophrenia today.

Lastly – some children I know with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder DO NOT LIE. They may believe people are trying to poison them but that is based not on the recursive thoughts you are attributing to them, but rather, due to interpretation of false perceptions. i.e. it is the INPUT data that gets garbled.

Just another point of view from someone who sadly knows too much.