What is Schizoaffective Disorder?
The initial diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder can be somewhat confusing. Many patients and loved ones wonder, “What does that mean?” “How is it different than Schizophrenia?” We’re here to break it down for you. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) Schizoaffective Disorder is classified as: An uninterrupted period of illness during which there is a Major Mood Episode (Major Depressive or Manic) concurrent with the Criterion A of Schizophrenia. The Major Depressive Episode must include Criterion A1. Depressed mood. Delusions or hallucinations for 2 or more weeks in the absence of a Major Mood Episode (Depressive or Manic) during the lifetime duration of the illness. Symptoms that meet criteria for a Major Mood Episode are present for the majority of the total duration of the active and residual portions of the illness. The disturbance is not attributable to the effects of a substance or another medical condition.
I’m sure you’re thinking that you’re more confused now than when you started but not to worry! What all of this means is the person exhibits symptoms of Schizophrenia and also has symptoms of a mood disorder like major depression and/or mania. Some describe Schizoaffective Disorder as Schizophrenia with Bi-polar Disorder. Although it is a little more complicated than that, it is a good overall generalization of the disorder. The symptoms of Schizophrenia include hallucinations such as hearing voices and seeing things that are not there, delusions, disorganized speech, disorganized or catatonic behavior, and the decrease or lack of speech, movement, or emotion. Along with these symptoms the patient will have periods of depression (disinterest in l...
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...umbers don’t seem to be out there. If anyone happens to find any rates of relapse for Schizoaffective Disorder please send us an email! However, it seems to be agreed that a relapse can happen and is more likely to happen if no medication is taken. This is one reason that it is extremely important to be sure the patient continues any prescribed medications. No medication should ever be stopped without speaking to your doctor. Remember, your doctor has your best interests at heart so it is important to keep him or her up to date on your situation.
Symptoms of a relapse will be the same as the symptoms of the first episode. There will be mood changes such as depression and mania. If these symptoms come back contact your doctor immediately. Don’t let a relapse discourage you. There are always going to be speed bumps but the important thing is to keep pushing forward.
Patients are given a prescription of medications that reduce psychotic symptoms and antidepressants (2011). Schizoaffective disorder is a amalgamation of mood and cognitive disturbances. This was evident in the manner that interacted with her household help and sister. She was anxious whenever she had to give orders to her cook therefore, she had difficulty establishing a sense of control in her household. Treating schizoaffective disorder pharmacologically may be complicated because the individual may be too depressed or suffering from paranoia about the medication. Virginia may have benefited from medication because she had a support system that could assistance in compliance. When the patient takes the medications as prescribed the symptoms of paranoia , hopelessness and lack of concentration can be
In relation to drug abuse, relapse is resuming the use of a chemical substance or drug after a period of abstinence. The term can be said to be a landmark feature of a combination of substance abuse and substance independence. The propensity for dependency, repeated use, and tendencies that take the form of the substance being used, are some of the issues that drug users’ experience. Substances that enhance most severe tendencies in users and pose high pharmacological efficacy, are those that are cleared quickly from the body, in addition to those that bring out the highest tolerance. There can be increased substance tolerance with the increasing dependency in relation to drug in question, and withdrawals and cravings when the user stops.
According to the DSM-IV, schizophrenia is classified under the section of “Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders”. Schizophrenia is one of the most serious major chronic brain disorders in the field of mental health; it is a neurological disorder that affects the cognitive functions of the human brain. People living with this incapacitating illness can experience multiple symptoms that will cause extreme strain in their own and their families and friends life. The individual can lose reality, unable to work, have delusions and hallucinations, may have disorganized speech and thought processes, will withdraw from people and activities, they may become suspicious and paranoid, may behave inappropriately in every day social situations. They may neglect personal hygiene and dress improperly, use excessive make-up; every day life is becoming chaotic for everyone involved.
Schizophrenia is a disorder that affects about 1 in 100 people at different stages in their lives and is very difficult to diagnose. It has many symptoms that typically begin to appear around age 18-30 (2). Signs of Schizophrenia can be misread and sometimes overlooked due to the amount of other disorders that share many of the symptoms. Autism is one example. Symptoms can be classified into "negative" and "positive." Negative symptoms could be seen as those that are absent but should be present. Examples of negative symptoms include lack of motivation or apathy, blunted feelings, depression, and social withdrawal (1). Positive symptoms are those that should be present but are absent. Some examples of positive symptoms are hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder, and an altered sense of self (1). It is thought that hallucinations are the...
According to the Johns Hopkins Medicine Website , schizophrenia is “a mental illness that usually strikes in late adolescence or early adulthood, but can strike at any time in life” that is characterized by “delusions, hallucinations, bizarre behavior, [and] disorganized speech” among other symptoms. Schizophrenia is, at its core, the altering of a person’s perception of reality by some somatic means and when observed by a psychologically sound individual, can be quite unsettling. After all, seeing a person whose reality is fractured causes us to doubt our own reality, if only in a fleeting thought.
Schizophrenia, also known as the splitting of the mind, is a mental disorder characterized by disintegration of thought process and of emotional responsiveness. It manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid and bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it are accompanied by significant social and or occupational dysfunction. It is a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions and hallucinations, and accompanied by other emotional behavioral or intellectual disturbances. There are three main factors that are involved in the diagnosis of schizophrenia: 1-Delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, which is a manifestation of formal thought disorder, grossly disorganized behavior or catatonic behavior, negative symptoms, blunted affect, alogia or avolition; 2-Social or occupational dysfunction; 3- Significant duration: continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months; according to the DSM IV. Delusions are a false belief based on faulty judgment about one’s environment. Hallucinations are experiencing something from any of the five senses that is not occurring in reality. Positive and negative (deficit) symptoms are important in diagnosing schizophrenia. Positive symptoms (PS) are not experienced, but are present. Delusions, disordered thoughts and speech, tactile, auditory, visual, olfactory, and gustatory hallucinations or manifestations of psychosis are all positive symptoms. Negative symptoms (NS) are deficits of normal emotional responses and thought processes that normally do not respond to medications. The patient experience a flat or blunted affect and emotion, poverty of speech (alogia), inability to expe...
Some people have many different views and ideas about schizophrenia and what really is considered schizophrenia. “Eugen Bleuler had four primary symptoms were abnormal associations, autistic behavior and thinking, abnormal affect, and ambivalence. As well as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association in its second edition was heavily influenced by Bleulers criteria to make the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Bleuler thought that between thought processes and thought, emotion, and behavior to be the hallmark of illnesses and the most obvious and striking manifestation of schizophrenia were only ‘accessory symptoms’ and saw symptoms of schizophrenia in a continuum with normal behavior” (Kaplan and Sadock, page 1432). The definition of schizophrenia is not just one disorder; other disorders branch out of the vague and interesting schizophrenia as in paranoid, catatonia, hebephrenia, disorganized, undifferentiated, residual, and many more.
First, as most people envision a schizophrenic person, a person with schizophrenia will experience either delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech. They may in fact experience more than one or all of these criteria.
What is Schizophrenia? Schizophrenia is brain disorder that makes it hard to see the difference between reality and imagination, have normal emotional responses, and act normal in social situations. Schizophrenia is relatively young, it has only been around for less than 100 years. It was first discovered by Dr. Emile Kraeplin in 1887. He believed it was a mental illness. A few documents take Schizophrenia’s origins back to Egypt during the Pharaoh’s rule around 1550 B.C. People originally thought schizophrenia was simply madness, and usually associated it with madness, even though it is quite different from madness. Symptoms of this disease include Positive symptoms, which are: hallucinations, or things that someone can see, feel, smell, or hear that do not really exist. Many people hear voices inside their heads, see people that are not there, or smell odors no one else smells. Delusions are another symptom, also known as bizarre beliefs, these may include paranoid delusions also, which are delusions that tell the person that others are trying to hurt them. Thought Disorders are a symptom in which the person thinks unusually or dysfunctionally. Movement disorders may be present in schizophrenic people, they may seem like twitches or small, sharp, and sudden movements. Schizophrenia’s “negative symptoms” are harder to recognize. These include the flat affect, in which the persons face doesn’t move and the voice is droning. The lack of pleasure in life is another once, along with the lack of ability to start and sustain activities, and little speech. These symptoms prevent or block the person from living a normal life because they cause social, physical, and emotional, and mental problems. This may lead to psychosis, insanity, or ...
If you have recently started a medication known to be addictive, but feel side effects taking hold, go to your doctor to discuss ceasing the medication. For some people it is important to continue taking the medicines that will help them, but avoiding addictions at all costs is equally as important.
...y is the severe impairments in social relationships. Schizophrenics with asociality have few friends and may not desire close relationships with other people. They also have poor social skills and a general disinterest in being around other people. The third negative symptom is anhedonia. This is the loss or lessening of pleasure. There are two types of pleasure but the main one is anticipatory pleasure that is diminished in schizophrenics. “Thus, the anhedonia deficit in schizophrenia appears to be in anticipatory pleasure.”() Blunted affect is the fourth negative symptom of schizophrenia. It refers to the lack of outward expression of emotion. This symptom is characterized by the person vacantly staring, the muscles in the face being motionless or the eyes lifeless. Finally the fifth negative symptom is alogia. People with alogia have a severe reduction in speech.
The problem with diagnosing mental-health illness in early recovery before this period is the overlap in symptoms of several mental-health conditions that would seem reasonable; however, may well be false. The real person can’t possibly be known when someone is impacted by the process of withdrawing from their drug of choice and learning to cope with life without it. A person may also experience mental-health symptoms from post-acute withdrawal syndrome anywhere from six to eighteen months after withdrawal.
Some antidepressants like Prozac for instance, can cause certain side effects to where many users are unable to stay on them long enough to derive any real benefit. In fact, Prozac?s manufacturer admits that 35% of all patients receiving Prozac in pre-release trials stopped taking it due to adverse reactions. A vast personality change is another effect. Some users reported that after being on Zoloft for two months (which is the time it takes for their bodies to become chemically dependent) one day without their pill would make them more on edge, more reluctant to ?snap? at people and more sensitive to others remarks. The depressed patients also reported feeling dependent on the drug and without it, they felt they would not be able to function how the normally would. Once a person starts taking any type of antidepressant, that person cannot just stop taking the pills cold turkey.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a breakdown in the cognitive, emotional and behavioral areas of functioning. These breakdowns usually lead the person to having unsuitable actions and feelings, incorrect perceptions and delusions, a separation between reality and fantasy and also a sense of psychological destruction. Similarly, bipolar disorders are a group of mood disorders that range anywhere from extreme mood swings, manic episodes to depressed episodes, or even mixed episodes that can affect daily living. Bipolar I disorder is characterized by being a mental disorder that causes unusual changes in mood, levels of activity, and energy. The mania portion of bipolar I disorder is characterized by an abnormal and persistently elevated mood lasting at least one week. This manic episode is accompanied with at least three additional symptoms such as a decreased need for sleep, a flight of ideas, easily distracted and a major increase in s...
Schizoaffective disorder is a psychotic disorder that distorts a person’s perception of reality. Showing itself to be very similar to schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder has symptoms that include hallucination, delusions, and disorganized speech. This disease also shows similarities to affective disorders, such as bipolar disorder with symptoms including major depressive episodes, manic episodes, or these types of symptoms are mixed with those that are found in psychotic disorder. Like schizophrenia and affective disorders, this illness is difficult to treat on the basis of finding what is the cause of the episode, the type of treatment available for schizoaffective disorder, and the adherence to the regimen created for treatment. What shall be done here is to review various literature sources that go into detail of what schizoaffective disorder is and its causes, the types of treatments that are used for people with schizoaffective disorder, and the cooperation of patients with schizoaffective disorder.