Schizoaffective/Depressive vs. Schizophrenia w/Depression

So to the best of my understanding, Schizoaffective Disorder can be classified as either bipolar or depressive.

As I've read that a lot of people with Schizophrenia also have depression, I am wondering … what is the difference between Schizoaffective with depression and Schizophrenia?

My pdoc recently told me that Schizoaffective is not "as bad" as Schizophrenia, so does the difference have to do with severity? Or is it that Schizoaffective contains depressive episodes that somehow differ from the depression that Scizophrenic people can suffer? Or something else that I'm missing?

I'm just trying to sort this out and wonder if anyone has any thoughts.

My new pdoc said he was changing the dx to schizoaffective because he thinks my anxiety counts as a mood thing, plus I have insight. He said schizophrenia is for people who don't have insight. Sounds crazy to me, but that's what he said. :/

I've never heard or read this, but it seems like it would make sense, maybe.

i've had so many people tell me i'm not even mentally ill because i am rational and smart. which made no sense to me. while i'd like to believe i'm not mentally ill, it's just obvious to me, whether i want to fully admit it or not, that i am mentally ill. this was off topic, but i felt like i had to say that. lol.

I am schizoaffective depressive type.

I was misdiagnosed a long time as Major depression with psychotic features, part of the reason for that was I was keeping my hallucinations etc, from my psychiatrist because I had a fear of being labeled schizophrenic or being hospitalized. This diagnosis makes more sense because I have a lot of schizophrenics in my family.

I have a lot of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia too, like a flat affect, monotone voice, lack of motivation even on meds that seem to get rid of my deep depression, I struggle with apathy/motivation and flatness.

It showed up around my early teens first as a deep depression, then started hallucinating everyday and developed delusions around those hallucinations. I saw floating skulls everywhere and thought they were trying to take over my brain.

Talking about the insight thing...When I was hospitalized the first time for this, they diagnosed me as schizophrenic, but later the psychiatrist said I had too much insight to be schizophrenic, so he changed it to depression with psychosis. But because of all the schizophrenics in my family, it's probably schizoaffective, which now I am diagnosed as.

Hi potatoe,

I also did not tell my psychiatrist about my hallucinations for a long time. Partly this was because I did not realize certain hallucinations were hallucinations, and partly because I, like you, did not want to be hospitalized.

The insight thing is interesting; it seems like maybe that is one of the main differences, if not the main difference between schizophrenia and schizoaffective with depression.

As of now, I am still an undetermined type.

Hi Phoenix,

when i asked my psychiatrist to explain it to me he told me that it's like a spectrum with bipolar and depression one end and schizophrenia the other with varying severity. schizoaffective is somewhere in the middle apparently. i find the comment's about insight very interesting because i was told my insight is quite poor sometimes and i'm recently diagnosed schizoaffective.

Yeah, snake pit, it is confusing to me... I know that at my worst of times I had no insight and nothing anyone could say would convince me that my delusions or paranoia weren't real. Now that I am doing better I have some perspective.

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Conversely, there are reports of people with chronic schizophrenia having remarkably good insight (although not the norm). Dr. E. Fuller Torrey describes such cases in his book Surviving Schizophrenia (6th edition): a Family Manual.