Comorbidity of Autism (part 2)

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Learning Disorder

  • Dyslexia mind can be differ from neutral people; patient with dyslexia suffers on confusion of words that being busy and making the patient more stressful. Source: istock
  • Dyslexia
  • Patient with dyslexia is a learning disability that affects on how the patient struggle up with language-based skills such as reading, writing, spelling, and typing. What a tie with autism itself is they are complement each other. Dyslexia makes the patient struggle by decoding word in the mind, while the patient wants to speak up, they are struggle with initiating the conversation or engaging the conversation between others (Loftus, 2025).
  • Dyscalculia
  • Same goes like dyslexia as the learning disorder, but the patient suffers on how the patient interpret the mathematics such as numbers, simple notation and operation, and other numerical related by statistics. Sometime, autistic patient does not interest with number and being struggle on numerical thinking, makes the patient memory about identifying numerical seem to be difficult (Bachert, 2025).
  • Intellectual Disability
  • Some of uneducated children or adult with autism will suffer an intellectual disability, which is this disorder occur on lower score of Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Around in the world, patient with autism that comorbid with intellectual disability has an occurrence around 30-40% on entire world. (Loftus, 2025).

Mood and Psychiatric Disorder

  • Anxiety
  • The definition of anxiety itself is a someone emotion with heightened alertness due imbalance of serotonin and dopamine in the brain. Usually, anxiety disorder co-occurs with several comorbid issues, such as panic disorder, specific phobia, and the worst case is the over stimuli on the brain that follows on fear feeling. Both in children and adult can experience anxiety in daily life, impairing them into uncomfortable in society situation. In psychiatric term, anxiety divides into two common types, general anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder. These two types affect to everyone both self-diagnosed or being treat up on professionals. Anxiety causes the patient repeat the something uncomfortable into ritual or habit that unusual for other. In the world population, in older literature, there are around 40% in total population in the world that the anxiety disorder tied into autism spectrum disorder (Steensel, 2011). Usually, anxiety also co-occur with specific disorder like obsessive compulsive (personality) disorder, avoidant personality disorder, and other psychiatric disorder that follows later.
  • Bipolar disorder have two sides of mood. Sometimes being depressed on 2 weeks or more, then startle to being happy, called as mania or hypomania, on 4 to 7 days or more. Source: wikiimage
  • Bipolar disorder
  • Bipolar disorder in simple term call as mood swing in rapid season or time. Bipolar usually occur on women than men, making bipolar disorder is one of source of misdiagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. With its similarity on rapid changes of season of patient’s mood and its aggression behavior, autism and bipolar disorder can co-occur each other on 27% patient in the whole world (Autism Speaks, 2022). What a different with major depressive disorder is adage of “manic” or “hypomanic” episodes, both of term describes the patient that arise up on its happiness, leading into burst up of energy that excessive, follows up with the mild hallucination, delusion, total loss of judgement, and exorbitant in economic management (Bipolar UK, 2018).
  • Major depressive disorder
  • Someone in the world experience sadness in proper way. While on someone being hopelessness with the patient world, this can lead into serious depression, called as clinical depression. Major depressive disorder usually lasts on 2 weeks or more, on linear sequence with mild to severe depression and does not follow with neutral emotion (Bipolar UK, 2018). In comorbidity with autism spectrum disorder, major depressive disorder can occur approximately on 40% patient in the world (Croen et al., 2015). This topic also leading into suicidal and self-harm situation that worsen the chance of survive in the world with major depressive.
  • As an illustration above, patient with schizophrenia feels detached on world's life. Source: OMORI 
  • Schizophrenia
  • Although autism and schizophrenia in the past have related each other, when schizophrenia develops when on adulthood age and autism spectrum disorder itself coined as childhood schizophrenia, there is a chance a patient with late diagnosed autism receives the diagnosis of schizophrenia later in adulthood in psychiatry. In the entire world, there are no specifics of percentage, but it varies on 3% to 52% of comorbidity with autism spectrum disorder both diagnosed on childhood and late diagnosed on adulthood (Marin, 2018).

Eating Disorders

  • Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder and selective food disorder
  • In short, both of these two of eating disorder involves on the patient refuse the specific food in terms of taste, texture, and smell, leaving the specific ritual such as being on diet and refuse on specific food. Usually, this disorder follows up in the childhood and can be able to cure by specific method to bring happiness to be eating. Some of them, if don’t be treated on solely purpose, leading into permanent phobia on specific meal, cause up the patient would choke and puke up the entire food due intolerance of brain and mind when selecting a food.
  • Allergy for meal
  • Several children also experience with the avoidance on specific ingredients of meal, such as gluten, milk, peanut, or others. This developmental issue can be cured by avoid up the potential allergies food that worsen the whole body.

Gastrointestinal issues

  • Constipation
  • It is tie with eating disorder, when the patient shows few foods on the belly, it causes up to develop more “concrete” stool if does not being out properly. Since autistic spectrum have varies on the severity of feeling of pain, if goes into hyposensitive, a patient does not feel pain on stomach area, leading into constipation process in decomposing the meal due lack of fiber of food or drink. In median prevalence with autism spectrum disorder, it is estimated on 22% patient tie up with constipation both on childhood and adulthood in the world (Holingue, 2017).
  • Gastroesophageal reflux disease and dyspepsia
  • It is tie on gastrointestinal issue, especially on constipation and diarrhea outcome on the belly. In the upper stomach near pancreas, if the patient does not tolerate with stomach acid, called as dyspepsia, the stomach acid with its containment in the stomach would reflux up into the throat and sometime, leading into puking session. There are no specifics the rate patient tied with autism spectrum, but it is tied with diet program or poor food management.

Illustration patient being sui*dal in fiction, as pictured above, the suspect dropped away on the lake alongside the peak of the mountain. Source: remedy

Self-harm and suic*dal

Suici*al and self-harm common with autism spectrum with depression rate that same. Around 4 times of autistic people do a suici*al attempt due its hopelessness of life (Attwood, 2007).