Comparison of childhood disintegrative disorder and disintegrative psychosis not diagnosed as childhood disintegrative disorder.

To clarify the difference of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edn; DSM-IV) childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD) from International Classification of Diseases (9th revision; ICD-9) disintegrative psychosis (DP), 10 CDD children (mean age, 7.7 years) and 18 DP children (mean, 6.5 years) not diagnosed as CDD divided into DSM-IV autistic disorder (DP-AD; n = 11) and pervasive developmental disorders not otherwise specified (DP-PDDNOS; n = 7) were compared on 31 variables not directly related to the normalcy before regression. The CDD, DP-AD, and DP-PDDNOS groups did not differ significantly in 28 variables. The DP-PDDNOS group met significantly a smaller number of items in criterion A of DSM-IV autistic disorder criteria than the CDD and DP-AD groups, both of which did not differ significantly in this respect. The CDD group tended to be more abnormal in auditory responsiveness and verbal communication than the DP-PDDNOS group. While CDD is distinct from DP-PDDNOS, its validity apart from AD with regression remains to be studied.