Psychosis of Infancy and Early Childhood, as Manifested by Children with Atypical Development

The ESSEN study of childhood-onset schizophrenia: Selected results

“…It may now be taken as certain that schizophrenic psychoses can be reliably diagnosed in children using adult criteria according to DSM-III-R, DSM-IV or ICD-10 (2,4,11,12,17,40,44,45). We agree with Kolvin et al (30), Reiser (38), Strömgren (42), and Watkins et al (44) that a schizophrenic psychosis cannot be diagnosed with sufficient certainty before the age of 5 or 6 years, because up to this age the psycho-biological maturation does not yet reach a sufficient level to allow the elaboration of true psychotic symptoms (11,25). Our results confirm those of Garralda (16) and Watkins et al (44) that, in general, individual experiences that can be unequivocally diagnosed as delusions and hallucinations do not occur before the age of nine.…”

Research on the Neuropathophysiology of Autism and its Implications for Occupational Therapy

“…As Rutter (1978) points out, depending on etiological suppositions, researchers have singled out different symptomologies as being of primary import. For example, atypical ego development has been emphasized by psychoanalytical investigators (Reiser, 1963), whereas for Ornitz and Ritvo (1968), perceptual inconstancy was thought to be the preeminent problem. Moreover, other clinical entities such as organic brain syndrome, mental retardation, and childhood schizophrenia have not been clearly distinguished from a discrete autistic syndrome, although efforts have been made to either tighten criteria (Rutter, 1978) or formulate an instrument sensitive enough to distinguish these sometimes overlapping clinical diagnoses (Rimland, 1971).…”

Physical Growth and Development in a Sample of Autistic Girls from New South Wales

“…Bender (1947) noted that growth discrepancies in schizophrenic children were marked, but she offered no anthropometric data to support this statement. Goldfarb (1961) in his assessment of schizophrenia in c h i l d r e n f o u n d t h e i r physical characteristics to be similar to those of a matched control group of normals as did Reiser (1963) in his study of psychosis of infancy and early childhood. Sackler et a/.…”