28 Facts About Schizoaffective disorder

Schizoaffective disorder is a mental disorder characterized by abnormal thought processes and an unstable mood.

The main criterion for a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder is the presence of psychotic symptoms for at least two weeks without any mood symptoms present.

Common symptoms of the Schizoaffective disorder include hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech and thinking.

People with schizoaffective disorder are likely to have co-occurring conditions, including anxiety disorders and substance use disorders.

Diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder is based on DSM-V criteria as well as the presence of various symptoms such as mania, depression, and schizophrenia.

Outcomes for people with DSM-5 diagnosed schizoaffective disorder depend on data from prospective cohort studies, which have not been completed yet.

Schizoaffective disorder is defined by mood disorder-free psychosis in the context of a long-term psychotic and mood disorder.

Genetic studies do not support the view that schizophrenia, psychotic mood disorders and schizoaffective disorder are distinct etiological entities, but rather the evidence suggests the existence of common inherited vulnerability that increases the risks for all these syndromes.

Schizophrenia spectrum disorders, of which schizoaffective disorder is a part, have been increasingly linked to advanced paternal age at the time of conception, a known cause of genetic mutations.

The physiology of people diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder appears to be similar, but not identical, to that of those diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; however, human neurophysiological function in normal brain and mental disorder syndromes is not fully understood.

Schizoaffective disorder is more likely to occur in women and begins at a young age.

DSM-IV schizoaffective disorder definition was plagued by problems of being inconsistently used on patients; when the diagnosis is made, it does not stay with most patients over time, and it has questionable diagnostic validity.

Individuals with schizoaffective disorder are often diagnosed with substance abuse disorder, usually relating to tobacco, marijuana, or alcohol.

Specialty books written by experts on schizoaffective disorder have existed for over eight years before DSM-5 describing the overuse of the diagnosis.

Recent review of psychotic disorders from large private insurance and Medicare databases in the US found that the diagnosis of DSM-IV schizoaffective disorder was used for about a third of cases with non-affective psychotic disorders.

Major reason why DSM-IV schizoaffective disorder was indispensable to clinical practice is because it offered clinicians a diagnosis for patients with psychosis in the context of mood disorder whose clinical picture, at the time diagnosed, appeared different from DSM-IV "schizophrenia" or "mood disorder with psychotic features".

The DSM-IV criteria for schizoaffective disorder will continue to be used on US board examinations in psychiatry through the end of 2014; established practitioners may continue to use the problematic DSM-IV definition much further into the future.

New schizoaffective disorder criteria continue to have questionable diagnostic validity.

Real life schizoaffective disorder patients have significant and enduring symptoms that bridge what are incorrectly assumed to be categorically separate disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The categorical diagnostic manuals do not reflect reality in their separation of psychosis from mood Schizoaffective disorder, nor do they currently emphasize the actual overlap found in real-life patients.

Primary treatment of schizoaffective disorder is medication, with improved outcomes using combined long-term psychological and social supports.

Schizoaffective disorder is more likely to occur in women and symptoms begin manifesting at a young age.

Management of the bipolar type of schizoaffective disorder is similar to the treatment of bipolar disorder, with the goal of preventing mood episodes and cycling.

Historical clinical observation that schizoaffective disorder is an overlap of schizophrenia and mood disorders is explained by genes for both illnesses being present in individuals with schizoaffective disorder; specifically, recent research shows that schizophrenia and mood disorders share common genes and polygenic variations.

Schizoaffective disorder was included as a subtype of schizophrenia in DSM-I and DSM-II, though research showed a schizophrenic cluster of symptoms in individuals with a family history of mood disorders whose illness course, other symptoms and treatment outcome were otherwise more akin to bipolar disorder than to schizophrenia.

Patients commonly diagnosed with DSM-IV schizoaffective disorder showed a clinical picture at time of diagnosis that appeared different from schizophrenia or psychotic mood disorders using DSM-IV criteria, but who as a group, were longitudinally determined to have outcomes indistinguishable from those with mood disorders with or without psychotic features.

Schizoaffective disorder was changed to a longitudinal or life course diagnosis in DSM-5 for this reason.

Whether schizoaffective disorder is a variant of schizophrenia, a variant of bipolar disorder, or part of a dimensional continuum between psychotic depression, bipolar disorders and schizophrenia is currently being investigated.