so schizoaffective disorder czar those
where someone meets the criteria for
both schizophrenia and a major mood
disorder and both sets of symptoms are
enough so that they cause some kind of
distress or are interfering with normal
daily life so what exactly is a major
mood disorder though well it's a bit of
a broad umbrella or category for
illnesses that involve a serious change
in mood and I don't just mean like
feeling sad or irritable from time to
time not just like having a bad day or
something mood disorders affect your
everyday emotional state and they're
more intense and more difficult to
manage compared to just a bad mood or
just feelings of sadness this might be
persistent sadness that doesn't go away
and so there's sort of a spectrum of
mood disorders where we put a normal
mood right in the middle and then all
the way over on this side there's this
severe depression which seriously
interferes with your ability to enjoy
life and then there's varying degrees of
depression in between and then all the
way on the other side there's mania
which is like this abnormally elevated
mood so maybe things like feeling very
irritable or having insomnia and having
very fast and energetic speech or racing
thoughts and just like major depression
this would be enough such that it
interferes with your daily life and then
you've also got these varying degrees in
between normal and mania so a major mood
disorder might be out here at severe
depression or out here at severe mania
or you might have these like huge swings
in mood between depression and mania
which is sometimes called bipolar
disorder okay so let's say you've got
this circle for major mood disorders
like depression mania or bipolar
disorder and then this circle represents
schizophrenia and symptoms of psychosis
like hallucinations and delusions if we
combine these two sets this middle chunk
is what we call schizoaffective disorder
which as we can see has both a major
mood disorder and also symptoms of
schizophrenia
now just like schizophrenia and mood
disorders though there have yet to be
any imaging or lab tests that we've
developed to definitely tell us that
hey this verse says schizophrenia or hey
this person has severe depression or
this person has both meaning that they
would have schizoaffective disorder that
being the case we have to look for
symptoms of both schizophrenia and a
mood disorder to come up with a
diagnosis of schizophrenia or ders is a
book called the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
the fifth edition which is also
frequently just called the dsm-5 now
this guy helps psychiatrists look for
certain specific criteria for patients
to meet to be diagnosed with a
particular disorder so if we page to the
section on schizoaffective disorder
we'll find several pieces of criteria to
meet in order to be diagnosed first the
patient has to have symptoms of
psychosis so things like delusions and
hallucinations without a major mood
disorder for a period of two weeks in
order to meet the criteria for the
schizophrenic portion if this doesn't
ever happen if we don't meet this
criteria then the symptoms are probably
more likely to be in line with the
psychotic depression as opposed to
schizoaffective disorder and secondly a
major mood episode which is a mood
disorder like depression mania or both
that lasts greater than two weeks has to
be present alongside schizophrenia for
an uninterrupted period of time to be
classified as schizoaffective disorder
but doesn't schizophrenia sometimes
include depressive symptoms what's the
difference between schizophrenia and
depressive symptoms and schizoaffective
disorder well in order to be diagnosed
with schizoaffective disorder you have
to meet the criteria for major mood
disorders as well so if they were
diagnosed with schizophrenia with
depressive symptoms the depressive
symptoms must not be meeting the
criteria to constitute a major mood
disorder additionally the patient has to
be experiencing impairments in
functioning due to both the
schizophrenia and the major mood
disorder all right so let's post a
million-dollar question
what causes schizoaffective disorder
well by now you might be able to guess
that we don't exactly know but it's
thought to involve an imbalance in
several neurotransmitters in your brain
like dopamine
norepinephrine although genetics likely
plays a role there have yet to be any
genes identified but with that said we
know that having family members with
schizophrenia bipolar disorder or
schizoaffective disorder itself all
increases your risk of developing
schizophrenia schizoaffective disorder
we're usually going to use medications
we need to be careful because now
there's both symptoms of schizophrenia
and mood disorders currently there's
only one antipsychotic drug that's been
approved by the FDA for treatment of
schizoaffective disorder specifically
and it's called pala perdón or in Vega
but there are other antipsychotics that
may be used as well to target symptoms
of schizophrenia and help manage
psychotic symptoms for the mood disorder
symptoms it depends on the mood disorder
present if they have depression then
antidepressants will probably be
prescribed if they have mania then it's
likely they'll receive antipsychotics in
mood stabilizers like lithium apart from
drugs and medications though the patient
may also undergo some sort of
psychotherapy in the outlook or
prognosis of someone diagnosed with
schizoaffective disorder varies and it's
thought to be somewhere between that of
mood disorders in schizophrenia with
that said there tends to be a better
outlook than for those with
schizophrenia alone and a worse outlook
for those with mood disorders alone so
the best prognosis would be over here
with mood disorders and then the worst
prognosis is over here with just
schizophrenia and schizoaffective
disorder is somewhere in between so
things are risk factors that have been
shown to be associated with a worse
prognosis are things that relate to the
psychosis side of it so being closer to
schizophrenia other things are things
like earlier onset and when there's no
periods of remission or temporary
recovery and finally like we mentioned
before having a family member with
schizophrenia