Schizoaffective

Schizoaffective disorder - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic

I was once diagnosed with this. Still am officially. My current Pdoc is adamant that I'm "bipolar" and "not sz". But I have all the symptoms in the link - minus maybe one. For one thing my hallucinations are getting worse.

I kind of don't understand why it matters if you are schizoaffective or bipolar. And why your Pdoc insists you are bipolar. Although I guess it's nice to know. What concerns me is that your hallucinations are getting worse. Have you changed meds recently, gone off meds, or any kind of change in your life?

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, then schizoaffective depressive depressive type, and now the docs are deciding whether I have schizoaffective bipolar or straight bipolar I with a lot of psychotic features. To complicate things further, bipolar runs on my dad's side and schizophrenia runs on my mom's, but nobody gets diagnosed with both schizophrenia and bipolar. It's confusing.

It matters to some degree on how you get treated. Some antipsychotics they don't give to bipolar people. Also, if they think psychotic symptoms are do to mood extremes a pdoc might try an off label mood stabilizer instead of increasing/changing an antipsychotic. It can also change how you are treated in therapy settings and inpatient settings. Plus, knowing which one a person has can let a person know to what kind of symptoms they can expect to have and how to know when their symptoms are worsening.

I'm with Shaz in the sense that it doesn't matter as long as symptoms are being treated. However it does really matter a great deal because with bipolar, you need to watch out when your mood is low or elevated......with schozoeffective, you can be way off even when a mood episode isn't present so anytime, anywhere. It complicates things. (((Moose)))

The only thing that's really changed is I'm weaning off zyprexa. Life is just barely enough money to pay the bills as usual.

I totally agree with this.

The dividing line between the two diagnosis is really whether psychotic symptoms are present when there's no mood component.

In your position, I'd ask your pdoc specifically about that issue and if that's why he thinks you're bipolar.

Good idea. I know that I am not in any mood state when these have happened. I also record all my mood states and psychosis in my blog.

Well, schizoaffective disorder is more or less bipolar and schizophrenia combined.

I hope you get treated properly for the hallucinations whatever the diagnosis. It's got to be frustrating.

Could weaning off the zyprexa be causing this? Just curious why you are doing this?

Maybe but I have to get off zyprexa asap. But going up and down on the dose since January. It's bad for my liver.

More than frustrating. Scary they are so real.

Doing what?

I hate zyprexa so I'll take the spiders. Rexulti should be helping.

Ie put more of my psych records in my blog again. If I didn't know better I'd think it was fiction! (Link in my signature if you're interested)

You should be able to dump the zyprexa. I went from 20 to 10 to off. I had to put my big boy pants on because the first week off was really rough.

I wonder if she wants me to move to 2.5s

Why are you coming off zyprexa if your hallucinations are getting worse? Just curious.

I think she said before that it's causing cardiovascular/health problems

But yeah, it sucks when you find a good med and its side effects cause health issues. Seroquel did something similar to me. Made my cholesterol shoot through the roof, even with cholesterol medication (Lipitor).

It's a tough decision between physical & mental health.

I choose physical health.

Same. That's a big reason I went off Seroquel. My GP recommended me to get off it.

Shame that antipsychotics tend to have such bad side effects.