Throughout this season, we have taken a deeper look into serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, and dived in headfirst to talk to professionals and family members about the subject. But what if I told you that symptoms of schizophrenia are also experienced by people with autism? Even more revealing, people with autism are at a higher risk of developing schizophrenia. If a person has both a developmental disability and a mental health problem, such as schizophrenia, they have a dual diagnosis. Research has shown that 70% of people with autism have at least one mental health problem, with 50% having two or more.

Today, many professionals in the autism community are calling for a change to how they approach clinical care. Some believe that mental health assessments should be an integral part of treating people with autism. And no one understands the value behind these assessments as well as the difficulty of getting a proper diagnosis more than our guest Dr. Stephanie Ameis from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Dr. Ameis is a clinician scientist, psychiatrist, and Associate Director at the Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression. Dr. Ameis specializes in neuro-imaging, which is taking detailed pictures of the brain using MRI scans. And through her research, she hopes to better understand how to improve their mental health journeys. But for patients with both autism and Schizophrenia, this can be difficult since their symptoms are so similar. Signs of early schizophrenia can be mistaken for pre-existing autistic behaviours and with the added stress of the pandemic, many are left struggling to cope with their new mental health problems. We'll be getting into that and a whole lot more in this episode.

Resources for show notes:

• Stephanie Ameis – Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)
• The Social Ties Between Autism and Schizophrenia (Spectrum News)
• Autism Spectrum Disorder and Schizophrenia Are Better Differentiated by Positive Symptoms Than Negative Symptoms. (Frontiers in Psychiatry, June 2020)

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