[CopperStar]

Sorry to ask what is probably a really dumb question but I honestly don't know, and my Google searches are not helping me out very much.

But what is the difference between bipolar 1 with psychotic features and schizoaffective disorder?

I am bipolar, type 1, and I have had several episodes of severe delusions with some mild hallucinations. I also have a lot of dysphoric mania issues, rarely pure depression or pure mania.

How is this different from schizoaffective disorder?

[Victoria'smom]

schizoaffective disorder requires you to have psychotic symptoms outside of your regular manic/depressive episodes.

[CopperStar]

Originally Posted by Miguel'smom

schizoaffective disorder requires you to have psychotic symptoms outside of your regular manic/depressive episodes.

Thank you so much. That makes sense to me. So then it is basically having a mood disorder and schizophrenia at the same time, but instead of diagnosing a person with both disorders, they combine them into one disorder? That is pretty interesting.

[Victoria'smom]

Exactly right, but you don't have to have as many symptoms from 1 disorder (ie. No negative symptoms of Sz)

[tiger8]

This is very interesting. When I have disconnect from reality I think it's always stemming from a specific issue where I feel a bit schizo - I've had two outright psychotic episodes too before that got triggered by that issue - but this phase of at least partial disconnect from reality eventually ends up in drastical mood changes. So based on what I'm reading here, I'm not sure if this is a form of bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder or something else.

Let me describe this a bit better. I start with overthinking and withdrawing from reality and thinking and imagining crap. By default I'm not really emotional but then after a while of that first heavily mental phase I become exactly just that - high mood, sometimes negative emotions too, but the common denominator is that it's all pretty intense!

The high mood can also come from positive interaction, it's pretty reactive in terms of that. The negative emotionality gets acted out/released eventually. After the high mood is gone and/or the negative emotions - anger-related stuff or simply feeling like crying hard - got acted out, my mind suddenly gets "cleaned out" and the whole disconnect from reality issue can resolve itself temporarily.

And then when that emotional phase fully passes, next day I can crash for a short time. Depressive crash. But it never lasts a long time. A few hours or a day or two. Then for a while I'm my normal self.

However I need to note that this "normal self" is a bit similar to what's called as atypical depression. I've had this slightly atypical depression-like baseline for a pretty long time, well before the schizo / bipolar part started up, it's a low-ish state energy-wise and mood-wise but not entirely unmotivated about life.

Does this make sense? What does this most closely resemble? Thank you

[CopperStar]

I have no idea, your guess is as good as mine. I feel like there is never enough time even in a first 1 hour session with a pdoc to give them a comprehensive picture, so I feel like often a pdoc's guess is going to be even weaker than my own haha.

Before I became homeless last year, I was living with roommates, subletting a room in this house one of the roommates owned. I became absolutely terrified of them and convinced that they wanted to harm me in some way. My hygiene went completely downhill, my rented room was a massive disaster area, I had a breakdown at work and threw something at my supervisor, developed strong spiritual delusions that made me want to run away and be homeless, I eventually 'escaped' the house by locking the bedroom door and falling out of the window, but not before smashing my laptop so they couldn't use it to try to find me. I don't remember being depressed or manic through any of that.

But there's never enough time to go over such things with pdocs, I guess. There are too many stories, too many examples, and they're really mostly focused on the here/now, anyway.

[tiger8]

Originally Posted by CopperStar

I have no idea, your guess is as good as mine. I feel like there is never enough time even in a first 1 hour session with a pdoc to give them a comprehensive picture, so I feel like often a pdoc's guess is going to be even weaker than my own haha.

Before I became homeless last year, I was living with roommates, subletting a room in this house one of the roommates owned. I became absolutely terrified of them and convinced that they wanted to harm me in some way. My hygiene went completely downhill, my rented room was a massive disaster area, I had a breakdown at work and threw something at my supervisor, developed strong spiritual delusions that made me want to run away and be homeless, I eventually 'escaped' the house by locking the bedroom door and falling out of the window, but not before smashing my laptop so they couldn't use it to try to find me. I don't remember being depressed or manic through any of that.

But there's never enough time to go over such things with pdocs, I guess. There are too many stories, too many examples, and they're really mostly focused on the here/now, anyway.

Hmm would it help if you gave them a write up that they can just skim quickly? Faster than you retelling the stories over the whole session(s).

Anyway I want to fix something in my previous post, the thing that sounds a bit like atypical depression, maybe it's more like schizoid pd actually. That category seems to work better because as I said, I was never depressed and unmotivated, only unmotivated socially. And the low-ish mood I mention isn't depressive either, it's just low in terms of feeling nothing

Though not full-on schizoid pd, was full-on version only for about half a year.

So now my question is, do you go from schizoid issues to schizoaffective disorder or to bipolar with mild schizophrenic features O_o