Introduction: Mental health assessment in autistic individuals with intellectual disabilities may be challenging. Findings from non-autistic samples indicate overlap between obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and psychotic disorder/schizophrenia, but little is known about this potential overlap in autistic people. Methods: Explorative,…

Background: The frequency and intensity of physical activity are directly related to health in the general population. However, to our knowledge, no study has looked at that relationship in people with intellectual disability. Method: The aim of this study was to determine whether there were differences in the health of 407 people with…

Since their separation as independent diagnostics, autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) have been conceptualized as mutually exclusive disorders. Similarities between both disorders can lead to misdiagnosis, especially when it comes to average-IQ adults who were not identified during childhood. The aim of this…

Background: There is no study to date that has examined the association between history of abuse and adaptive functioning deficits in youth with co-occurring and psychotic disorders or mood disorders. Method: This study used a retrospective chart review of 98 youth under the age of 18 (Mean age = 16.06 years) with co-occurring intellectual…

This article examines problems in the clinical utility of the diagnosis of schizophrenia including reliance on questionable data, arbitrary criteria and categorization, inadequate precision for assessment and treatment evaluation, and omission of information on causal current and historical environmental factors. Some alternatives to the…

Voice hearing (VH) is often regarded as pathognomic for schizophrenia. The purpose of this article is to review and integrate historical, clinical, epidemiological, and phenomenological evidence in order to suggest that VH may be more appropriately understood as a dissociative rather than a psychotic phenomenon. First, we discuss the lifetime…

Background: Only one study has used a prospective method to analyze the diagnostic stability of first psychotic episodes in children and adolescents. The Child and Adolescent First-Episode Psychosis Study (CAFEPS) is a 2-year, prospective longitudinal study of early-onset first episodes of psychosis (EO-FEP). Aim: To describe diagnostic stability…

A comparison of clinical features and adult outcome in adolescents with three types of psychotic disorders: schizophrenic (SPh), schizoaffective (SA) and bipolar with psychotic features (BPP). Subjects (n = 41) were finally diagnosed (DSM-IV criteria) with SPh (n = 17), SA (n = 11) or BPP (n = 13). Clinical evaluation took place at onset and at a…

Objective: To examine the diagnostic stability and the functional outcome of patients with early-onset psychosis (EOP) over a 2-year follow-up period. Methods: A total of 24 patients (18 males (75%) and 6 females (25%), mean age [plus or minus] SD: 15.7 [plus or minus] 1.6 years) with a first episode of EOP formed the sample. Psychotic symptoms…

Diagnosing psychotic disorders in young people is difficult. High rates of co-morbidity may be one reason for this difficulty, but it may also be the case that current diagnostic categories are not the most useful when approaching the care of young people with psychotic symptoms. The Northern Ireland Early Onset Psychosis Study is the first study…

Background: Evidence suggests that, as a group, patients with schizophrenia have intellectual deficits that may precede the manifestation of psychotic symptoms; however, how successfully intelligence tests are able to discriminate schizophrenia from other psychotic disorders has yet to be investigated in detail. Methods: Using Wechsler Adult…

Objectives: The authors reviewed medical student encounters during 3 years of a required psychiatry clerkship that were recorded on a web-based system of six broad competency domains (similar to ACGME-recommended domains). These were used to determine diagnoses of patients seen, clinical skills practiced, and experiences in interpersonal and…

Briefly comments on the previous article by Noll and Benedict, disputing the assumption that the present state of knowledge limits clinicians to symptoms as a frame of reference for classification. (RH)