"The Social Ties Between Autism And Schizophrenia" - Daisy Yuhas
When the shy, dark-haired boy met with clinicians for a full psychiatric evaluation two years ago, almost everything about him pointed to autism. W. had not spoken his first words until age two. He was at least four before he could form sentences. As he got older, he was unable to make friends. He struggled to accept changes to his routine and maintain eye contact. But something else was clearly at work, too. “He had these things that he would call day dreams,” recalls Jennifer Foss-Feig, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. When she evaluated W., she noticed that he would often gaze into an empty corner of the room—particularly when he seemed to suspect that she wasn’t paying attention to him. (For privacy reasons, Dr. Foss-Feig declined to reveal anything but the child’s first initial.) Occasionally, he would speak to that space, as though someone else were there. Ultimately, they diagnosed him with autism and psychosis, which, Dr. Foss-Feig said, was probably due to schizophrenia. This combination of features, it turns out, is not all that unusual. “What generally has not been in the literature are very many studies comparing autism and schizophrenia directly,” Dr. Foss-Feig says. “That’s what I think we’re moving towards.”
- Jennifer Foss-Feig, PhD, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai