A comparative study of development and symptoms among disintegrative psychosis and infantile autism with and without speech loss.

To investigate clinical pictures and the validity of disintegrative psychosis (DP) as defined in ICD-9, 18 cases of DP were compared with 51 and 145 cases of infantile autism (IA) with and without speech loss, respectively, on clinical variables. The DP cases showed clearer regression after more satisfactory development than the IA cases with speech loss. Around age 7, about 4 years after regression, those with DP were significantly more severely retarded than those with IA, yet both were similar in autistic symptomatology. EEG abnormalities and mothers 30 or older at delivery were significantly more common in the histories of those with DP than of those with IA. DP may be linked with IA having speech loss with regression in mental development as a common denominator.