It is difficult to gain rapport with people with STPD due to the fact that increasing familiarity and intimacy usually increase their level of anxiety and discomfort.Group therapy is recommended for persons with STPD only if the group is well structured and supportive. Otherwise, it could lead to loose and tangential ideation. Support is especially important for schizotypal patients with predominant paranoid symptoms, because they will have a lot of difficulties even in highly structured groups. Comorbidity
Schizotypal personality disorder frequently co-occurs with major depressive disorder, dysthymia and social phobia. Furthermore, sometimes schizotypal personality disorder can co-occur with obsessive–compulsive disorder, and its presence appears to affect treatment outcome adversely. Some people with a clinical diagnosis of OCD have been found to also possess many schizotypal personality traits resulting in what can be called ‘schizotypal OCD’. Without proper treatment, STPD tendencies, such as magical thinking and paranoid ideation, could worsen the symptoms of OCD in an individual. There may also be an association with bipolar disorder. People with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) can commonly possess some schizotypal traits.In terms of comorbidity with other personality disorders, schizotypal personality disorder has high comorbidity with schizoid and paranoid personality disorder, the other two Cluster A conditions. It also has significant comorbidity with borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.Some schizotypal people go on to develop schizophrenia, but most of them do not. There are dozens of studies showing that individuals with schizotypal personality disorder score similar to individuals with schizophrenia on a very wide range of neuropsychological tests.
After birth, in the presence of suggestive features (such as macrocephaly), hydrocephalus can be confirmed with noninvasive imaging including head magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, or ultrasound showing ventriculomegaly, or direct measurement of intracranial pressure through invasive techniques such as lumbar puncture. Further, the spasticity found in patients with HSAS can be easily demonstrated by examining the deep tendon reflexes and the extensor plantar reflex (which will both be abnormally brisk and strong due to damage to the cortex and internal capsule of the brain). There are various types of genetic testing that can be used to confirm an L1 syndrome diagnosis in a patient. After birth, genetic tests carry a low-risk of physical complications and are minimally-painful: for the patient, the process requires a small amount of blood being drawn from the arm using a needle. However, prenatal genetic testing carries significant risks for both the fetus and mother due to the need to remove genetic material from the fetus while it is still in utero. In order to conduct prenatal genetic testing, the mother and fetus must undergo either amniocentesis (the surgical puncturing of the amniotic sac, which holds the fetus in the womb) or, less frequently, chorionic villus sampling.