After talking to my psychiatrist, we think I have bipolar in addition to sz. I’ve never really had intense mania. My upward swings are usually more subdued than that (hypomania?). The depression cycles hit me very hard though. I’m gonna talk to my pdoc about this more when I meet him next.
Does anyone else have a diagnosis of Bipolar (I/II) in addition to the sz diagnosis? Is it referred to as schizoaffective?
I have bipolar and possibly schizophrenia (schizoaffective).
The meds for bipolar I with psychotic features are generally the same for schizoaffective disorder.
Bipolar 2 is a little different than bipolar type I.
Bipolar 2 patients experience frequent and significant amounts of depression and don’t experience full blown manic episodes.
They may experience hypomanic episodes.
I’m schizoaffective bipolar type. Not sure if it is 1 or 2. I’m like you, I never get bad man8a, just hyp9mania. But my lows are bad.
Thank you for the info!
Interesting. For you, how long do depressive episodes last? Does it differ between people? My hypomanic epi’s are usually around 6months(ish). Depressive episodes last a lot longer: usually years 
I’m a fast cycler. My episodes don’t last more than a day, usually.
I’m a fast or rapid cycler too.
I am sza as well. 
When I was first diagnosed with a mental illness the psychiatrist said I had bipolar disorder. But I think one of the issues was I was really thin and had a high metabolism, so my psychotic episodes were really energetic and manic. Basically they injected me with an antipsychotic at the hospital and when I woke up I was basically symptom free. So I said I was fine and refused treatment but they had a two week hold placed on me, and I stayed at the hospital perfectly normal until I was released. I was fine for a year then I started having psychotic symptoms again, no voices, a little paranoia, but mainly just really emotionally unstable. Anyway this story goes on for years. But basically in the end antipsychotic medication for schizophrenia made the symptoms go away, and my mood is pretty stable so the original diagnosis was wrong, even though the treatment for bipolar is often the same for schizophrenia.
I was told early on that I was having schizophrenia, then bipolar. another doc said possibly schizophreniform. Now current doc says bipolar 1. She says im too high functioning for schizoaffective. Im cool with whatever the dx is, just give me the right meds so I can live well! 
thats called ultradian cycling I think. Thats tough. I went from kind of a 5 days down 2 days up for a long time then my cycles became quite long with months of mania and months of depression state.
Its just odd how things change for no apparent reason
does bipolar II get mixed episodes as well?
Yes mixed episodes are quite common with bipolar 2 as well @LevelJ1
if you go up and down but don’t wreck your car or get fired from your job or don’t do really wreckless stuff, you are probably going to get bipolar 2. You’re a lot less likely to get hospitalized for bp2 hypomania.
You might get started on Lamictal, which is fine for hypomania. Depakote and Lithium are nasty.
sza can be sz + depression or sz + bipolar.
at first i had diagnosis bipolar type 1… then later i got diagnosed with autism and they removed the bipolar dx… then later i got more and more psychotic for long periods and they changed it to sz and autism but pdoc said it could also be sza… then when i was in psych ward second time they said psychotic disorder NOS but pdoc keeps saying it’s sz or sza.
I don’t care so much about it though as long as i get the right meds…
Wanna dissagree with you about threatement of schizo and bipolar. Bipolar is trypamine illness, schizo is phenyloamine illness. Schizo can take clomipramine, in bipolar clomipramine (pure blood of antipsychotics, mood stab. and alone) causes/activates maximum illness - maniacal psychosis and psychotic mania, total insanity. Only antypsychedelic-antypsychotic works on psychotic mania ( hallucinations ) and maniacal psychosis ( extazy with delusions ). Clomipramine is dangerous 4 bipolar and bipolar on clomipramine is dangerous for other people.
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