Living with Schizoaffective Disorder: Myths, Facts, and Prospects

When I was about 22 years old, I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder bipolar type. I am 29 years old now, and still puzzled — What exactly constitutes schizoaffective disorder? Moreover, is the illness itself a diagnostic myth or a fact? No one wants to be labeled schizophrenic or even bipolar, but to be labeled schizoaffective — Is that a “worse” diagnosis or a “better” one? In the DSM-5, schizoaffective disorder is defined as “an uninterrupted period of illness during which there is a major mood episode (major depressive or manic) concurrent with criterion A of schizophrenia.”  Criterion A of schizophrenia is all the classic schizophrenic symptoms, such as delusions, paranoia, hallucinations, etc..  So is schizoaffective, then simply, symptoms of schizophrenia combined with a mood episode? A quick search about schizoaffective disorder on Google scholar yields results indicating otherwise.  In one study, authors found that schizoaffective disorder is genetically related to schizophrenia and bipolar and that it is essentially just psychotic mood disorder which should be treated as such because labeling it as schizoaffective (a definition invented in 1933) causes people to see the specific illness as a unification of two other diseases, namely, schizophrenia and bipolar.  This unification of two other distinct illnesses into one leads to substandard treatment, since what people are calling schizoaffective disorder is actually psychotic mood ...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Antipsychotic Medications Peer Support Personal Psychology Schizophrenia Stigma Treatment Coping Delusions Misdiagnosis Mood Disorder Mood Swings Paranoia Psychosis psychotic episode Schizoaffective Disorder Source Type: blogs