Comorbid psychopathology with autism spectrum disorder in children: an overview.

Kleinert et al. (2007) wrote a narrative review. They pulled together studies on other psychiatric disorders that show up with autism in children.

The paper is a map, not a new experiment. It tells clinicians what disorders to watch for and why missing them hurts treatment.

The review shows that ADHD, anxiety, and mood disorders ride along with autism far more often than chance.

It warns that autism symptoms can hide these extra problems, so standard screens often miss them.

Salazar et al. (2015) later counted 101 preschool and elementary kids with autism. Nine in ten had at least one extra psychiatric diagnosis. Their number gives a concrete rate for the age band the 2007 paper only described.

Joshi et al. (2010) looked at youth already sent to psychiatry. These clients averaged six comorbid diagnoses each. That clinic picture looks worse than the general child sample in Kleinert et al. (2007), but both agree comorbidity is routine.

Brereton et al. (2006) compared autistic youth to kids with intellectual disability alone. Parents rated the autistic group as having more emotional and behavior problems. Kleinert et al. (2007) folded this earlier finding into their overview, so the two papers line up rather than clash.

If you assess a child with autism, plan to screen for ADHD, anxiety, and mood disorders every time. Use parent and teacher reports together; Llanes et al. (2020) show they often disagree. When scores are high, refer on—treating only autism while ignoring the rest stalls progress.