I think I may be schioaffective. I’ve heard so many different things about the psychosis spectrum. Schizophrenia vs schizoaffective vs bipolar.
I think if there was no such thing as schizoaffective I would be schizophrenic. Because I get more psychotic than mood symptoms. I’ve never truly been manic. I’ve been depressed but I believe that’s a natural reaction to psychosis, to be depressed. When I came off meds I became paranoid, not depressed at all. I’ve been in 4 different hospitals. 7 admissions and 7 diagnosises. 2 schizophrenic 4 schizoaffective and 1 bipolar. The 4 schizoaffective came from the same hospital, same doctor. The 2 schizophrenic were from different hospitals. I know it doesn’t matter but I just wish I Could tell people I’m schizophrenic so they don’t ask what the F is schizoaffective??? Also I wish they told me I wasn’t schizoaffective and was schizophrenic or even bipolar for that matter!!! When I was told I was schizoaffective the first time I was soooo psychotic that I was like what the hell is that? That means nothing. I’ve never even heard of that! Sometimes I thought diagnosing me schizoaffective back in 2010 was a plot against me to make me struggle more to make me need more care in the long term since I completely disregarded that diagnosis as meaning anything in the beginning since I didn’t know what it meant…
When I was a kid I had so many different diagnoses, I literally at one point told a doctor to just “*■■■■■■■ TELL ME WHAT THE ■■■■ IS WRONG WITH ME YOU ■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■!!!”
And now that I know what’s wrong with me, I too wish I had Schizophrenia because it seems like it would be easier to live without the mood symptoms. Hypomania and depression have caused me a lot of problems.
And now… I’m so depressed I feel like I don’t want to live. I literally woke up yesterday and said to myself, “why couldn’t I have just died in my sleep?” I hate life. It’s because of the voices, like you said. I would hug you. No homo.
Lol no one ever explained to me what schizoaffective was AT ALL. When I was first diagnosed all I remember was I had a 60 day hospital stay not a clue what was going on and my mom told me “you’re schizoaffective, they told me”. Then that was the end of it. I wish they at least would have told me like "it’s kind of like schizophrenia " bastards. You can’t tell a naive psychotic 20 year old drug addict he’s schizoaffective and not explain it…
They claimed my biggest psychotic break “sounded like mania”. I’m diagnosed bipolar 1 schizoaffective. But I was on lithium AND lamictal at the time. They were like sugar pills to me. Now they claim it was a mixed episode. My pdoc rarely diagnosis schizophrenia. He told my therapist that schizophrenia is an awful disease (which is true). But she’s under the impression from him that schizophrenics are completely emotionless and display no feeling. And I have a lot of zest…which is why I can’t be schizophrenic.
Schizoaffective disorder is psychosis accompanied by a major mood disorder (such as depression).
I understand that you want to know specifically what you’re experiencing, but the labels for mental health disorders are out of control. DSM-5 is 947 pages long and contains 265 mental health disorders. However, many disorders have “subtypes,” so the actual number of disorders is over 500. Half of the people in the U.S. have at least one mental health disorder, and if you randomly pick a person, that person will probably have at least half a dozen mental health disorders.
Hey chew whatever ur diagnosis iz i don’t care… i like u… what i have come to know iz ur are high functional…u can make friends …u can drive cars .u can continue ur studies …and a lot …i know u will recover soon …keep fighting my 2 pac…!!!All eyes on me(pac)…!!!haha…!!!
My diagnosis still lingers between bipolar and SZ affect …causes i never had any psychotic break …!!! But i suffers from from almost all negative symptoms along with cognitive dysfunction i can’t study anymore …!!!
Doctors are poo sometimes
I know how you feel like holy ■■■■ just give me a damn answer. But unfortunately, it’s more difficult than that. Different doctors will have different opinions and what my dad told me was that what counts are two things
1.) what you believe in
2.) How to get better
In the end, doctors can’t go inside your brain or relive your experiences. You decide for yourself what you believe you have. But stay true. I also agree with @far_cry0 , I don’t care what your diagnosis is, you’re still awesome at the end.
Hey @chew
I am frustrated with the Schizoaffective Diagnosis.
I just tell most people that I have bipolar because most people have never heard of Schizoaffective.
When I tell certain people about Schizoaffective they will ask a million questions.
You can tell people that you have Schizophrenia since Schizoaffective is really a Sub Type of Schizophrenia any way. SZA is in the same family as SZ.
One time I met this girl in Iop and she was convinced she had the hardest life in the history of mankind. She was a heroin addict. There wasn’t any other struggle besides a difficult heroin addiction. I told her I was schizoaffective and she didn’t register in her head that that was something that would make your life difficult. She was the least enlightening person I’ve ever met in my life. But maybe if I had said I was “schizophrenic” she would’ve realized that her life wasn’t so bad… sure she didn’t have it easy but she was talking about her trauma and she said her most traumatic moment was getting arrested. She claimed she had ptsd. Well the third time I got arrested it was for a psychotic break and I had a gun pointed at my face by police. And that was 1/10000th as traumatic as the most traumatic event in my life. So yeah. I just think it’d tell the story better if I told people I was schizophrenic. That word just registers more in people’s heads. But like I said she was the least enlightening person I’ve ever met in my life. Oh well
I hear this a lot from people with sza. However, the prognosis for people with sza is actually better than the prognosis for people with pure sz. I don’t know why this is, but it’s pretty interesting considering the fact that to get a sza diagnosis you need to fulfill the diagnostic criteria for both sz and a mood disorder. You would think that sza, on average, would be a more serious disorder than sz, but it’s actually somewhere between sz and bipolar. On average, that is.
Well I’m probably not average lol… I have psychotic symptoms almost every day but very few major psychotic “episodes”. I have far fewer mood swings than I used to because Lithium has been like a miracle for me. I’ve never been manic, though I’ve been hypomanic many times. I’ve had several major depressive episodes and a few suicide attempts. I have relatively minor negative symptoms, such as I don’t enjoy things very much and I don’t like talking to people, but no real avolition or anything like that. I don’t have serious cognitive symptoms although I do have trouble learning new things and I have trouble concentrating and remembering. I also don’t have major thought disorder but I do have frequent circumstantial thinking/speech.
I’d say I’m relatively high functioning. I shower (usually) and do my laundry and I can act right in public… I’m relatively high functioning most of the time because when my psychotic symptoms get worse or I have a mood episode, things get really hard and I can’t function.
I think that’s why it seems like SzA is worse than Sz to me because a person with Sz has only psychotic episodes, but I have psychotic episodes AND mood episodes. The mood episodes cause me the most real problems though, such as being arrested, suicide attempts, using drugs, cutting myself, spending money I don’t have, getting fired, etc…
I would be on disability I think if they had actually obtained all my medical records. Lazy ass government workers only requested about a third of it, and none of it was psych records… Now I’m struggling to get them all myself so I can appeal and send in new records…
Is it possible to be “high functioning” and yet not be able to work? I don’t get it.
If you don’t get mania that’s fine, schizoaffective depressive type is a thing. That’s what the last pdoc I saw said I may have. I also believe it is a natural response to having a serious disorder. My depression nowadays most of the time is actually more severe and harmful to me than my psychosis though, which is why I stick with my major depression with psychotic features diagnosis.
If people don’t understand what it is, just say it’s schizophrenia with depression. What was your most recent diagnosis? You could just go with that.
Yes, it’s possible to be high functioning but not high functioning enough to be able to work. Sz and sza are very debilitating disorders. Doctors and therapists have called me high functioning at periods in my life when I was completely unable to work.
I really hope you get approved for disability. Financial security is extremely important when you’re trying to recover from a serious mental illness.
They’re thinking about doing away with the schizoaffective diagnosis anyway. There’s a lot of controversy around it and some think it’s just a catch all diagnosis for people that don’t fit a specific category. I cringed when they told me I had schizoaffective disorder in the hospital. The dr even said, “I’m sorry”. The name, like schizophrenia should be done away with and serious mental illness should be recognized more by what it really is rather than a collection of frightening symptoms with scary out dated names.
