What is Schizoaffective Disorder- Is It Worse Than Bipolar Disorder?

Schizoaffective disorder as a combination of schizophrenia and a mood disorder either bipolar disorder or depression. Where does the term affective come from? In psychology there’s a concept called the ABC’s of the psychology. It divides the mind into three domains. A is for affect which is your emotions or feelings, B is for behavior and C is for cognition which is how you think. Mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder primarily affect your emotions expression, so they are called affective disorders. Whereas Schizophrenia at it’s core affects your thinking, so it’s more of a cognitive disorder. With Schizoaffective disorder you get a combination of alterations in your emotions and your thinking abilities.

The gist of it that schizophrenia is a disorder where a person has psychotic symptoms as well as cognitive symptoms. The psychotic symptoms are hallucinations, delusions, or severe thought or behavioral disorganization.

A person with schizophrenia isn’t necessarily depressed. They may get agitated, but that agitation is not the same as mania. Mania is an elevated or irritable mood along with a lot of other things like increased energy and a decreased need for sleep. The person with pure schizophrenia isn’t experiencing these things.

So what happens with schizoaffective disorder is you have a depressive illness or bipolar illness superimposed on the schizophrenia. The diagnosis that you will get is called schizoaffective disorder bipolar type or depressive type.

Video that defines a manic episode



References
Seldin K, Armstrong K, Schiff ML, Heckers S. Reducing the Diagnostic Heterogeneity of Schizoaffective Disorder. Front Psychiatry. 2017;8:18. Published 2017 Feb 10. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00018

Amann BL, Canales-Rodríguez EJ, Madre M, et al. Brain structural changes in schizoaffective disorder compared to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2015;133(1):23–33. doi:10.1111/acps.12440

Hartman LI, Heinrichs RW, Mashhadi F. The continuing story of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder: One condition or two?. Schizophr Res Cogn. 2019;16:36–42. Published 2019 Feb 10. doi:10.1016/j.scog.2019.01.001


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