Some children who may seem psychotic actually have autism and can be helped by autism therapies.

This paper describes a series of children (case studies) who had autism instead of psychosis. The author writes about very early onset schizophrenia (VEOS), which is not very common. He has found in his practice that many children who were brought to him because the parents thought they had VEOS actually were acting up from anxiety from autism. The children were young and did not have the verbal skills to describe what they were feeling. The children improved with autism therapies.