Clinical Overlap and Psychiatric Comorbidity in Autism Spectrum Disorder in Adulthood: A Case Report
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25752/psi.10140Keywords:
autismo, sobreposição clínica, comorbilidade, perturbação esquizotípica da personalidade, perturbação esquizóide da personalidade, perturbações do espectro da esquizofreniaAbstract
Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an early neurodevelopmental disorder that accompanies the individual throughout life. There is a significant clinical overlap of ASD with other psychiatric disorders including personality disorders, psychotic disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. Additionally, the presence of high rates of psychiatric comorbidity, often with atypical presentations, delays the ASD diagnosis and makes it more difficult to manage.
Aims: To illustrate the complexity of ASD diagnosis and approach in adults.
Methods: Report of a clinical case and review of the literature.
Results and Conclusion: This paper presents the case of a 46-year-old patient, with ASD, with a long history of interpersonal difficulties and psychiatric symptomatology. Over the years, different diagnoses have been made, particularly schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders, psychosis not otherwise specified and paranoid schizophrenia, which led to poor adherence to treatment, and prevented a full understanding of the patient’s clinical presentation and lifelong struggles.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Articles are published under the license CC-BY-3.0 by Creative Commons, in full open-access, without any cost or fees of any kind to the author or the reader. In this scheme, the authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, allowing the free sharing of work, provided it is correctly attributed the authorship and initial publication in this journal. Readers and end-users are allowed to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship. The authors are permitted to take on additional contracts separately for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (eg, post it to an institutional repository or as a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (eg, in institutional repositories or on their website) as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as increase the impact and citation of published work.