The social ties between autism and schizophrenia

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When the shy, dark-haired boy met with clinicians for a full psychiatric evaluation two years ago, almost everything about him pointed to autism. W. had not spoken his first words until age 2. He was at least 4 before he could form sentences. As he got older, he was unable to make friends. He struggled to accept changes to his routine and maintain eye contact. And despite having an average intelligence quotient, he was unusually attached to objects; at age 11, he still lugged a bag of stuffed animals with him everywhere he went.

https://spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/social-ties-autism-schizophrenia/

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Interestingly both schizophrenia and autism develop at important stages where the brain is developing and changing. Maybe this is a clue as to their causes as part of natural neurodevelopment process. The fact that autism begins earlier in development might point to why it can be more disabling than schizophrenia, as the affected children have not had any time to develop orderly and normal behaviors while schizophrenics have had a couple of decades. Of course that doesn’t account for rare early onset cases of schizophrenia.