Childhood Schizophrenia

Before viewing this video, I was mostly unfamiliar with childhood schizophrenia.  While  observing Jani's behaviors during infancy, CS would not even have crossed my mind as a potential diagnosis.  In fact, I would have more readily considered the possibility that she had autism. 

From my understanding, it's possible to detect signs of autism during the first year of life.  For example, Jani's constant staring off at nothing in particular would have occurred to me as a sign of Autism.  Also, from what I understand it's common that children with ASD- oduring infancy- to cry frequently and not sleep through the night.

It seemed to get trickier when Jani got older.  She began talking at an appropriate age and she was able to respond appropriately to adult's questions.  Her answers, however, were often odd and nonsensical.  There were still some behaviors she exhibited as a seven year old that did seem to be typical of children with autism.  For example, she appeared to display some idiosyncratic and movements.  Also, her reactions to her brother crying seemed somewhat similar to who some children with autism would react.  Not to say that children with ASD would commonly react violently in that situation, but I think that people with ASD would have more difficulty tolerating an unpleasant auditory stimulus than a typical person.

A more broad similarity would between childhood schizophrenia and ASD would be the overall withdrawal from the social environment.  That said withdrawal, however, seems to occur for different reasons.  I think someone with ASD would withdraw simply because social behavior in and of itself is challenging for them.  Also because there other stimuli in the environment that are more reinforcing to them, such as objects or rituals.  In the case of childhood schizophrenia, it's much more mentalistic.  They withdraw because of delusions that prevent them from engaging in significant and appropriate interactions with others. 

While there are some broad similarities between the two diagnoses, I think they are very different.  I think it's important to perform the appropriate assessments as early as possible in order to determine the most appropriate diagnosis.