[SillyKitty]

After being told for a few years that I'm bipolar, mostly because my general practitioner saying she thought I was bipolar and my pdoc said, 'okay I see you're bipolar,' I have newly been diagnosed as schizoaffective bipolar type. I still plan to post here, though. I hope that's okay!

[TheatreKid]

I've bounced back and forth between schizoaffective and bipolar but fit bipolar disorder right now. Haven't had psychosis outside of a mood episode for a while.

[jesusplay]

so it's basically bipolar with psychosis?

[TheatreKid]

well, there's bipolar with psychotic features, which is when psychosis happens within mood episodes, and then there's schizoaffective. It's been described as "The diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder is made when the patient has features of both schizophrenia and a mood disorder (bipolar disorder or depression) but does not strictly meet diagnostic criteria for either alone." The bipolar type has psychosis combined with manic or mixed episodes, and the depressive type has psychosis combined with depressive episodes alone.

The DSM-IV definition of schizoaffective was criticized for being applied inconsistently and critics said that most patients diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder go on to be rediagnosed with a different disorder.

I can't find much info about the DSM-V.

[SillyKitty]

I have psychosis outside mania. I'm just out of inpatient from an all knowing voice telling me to murder my husband then commit suicide. Also I've been told I'm paranoid. This is all outside of any bipolar episode.

[Victoria'smom]

I'm labeled as bipolar w. Psychotic features but I feel I have psychosis outside episode. However I guess its a thing of I've never been stable enough to be dxd. I bounce between here, scizoaffective and psychosis board.