Schizoaffective disorder
Schizoaffective disorder is a mental disorder, the symptoms of schizophrenia and manic- depressive disorder ( bipolar affective disorder) combines. In addition to symptoms of mood disorder such as depression or mania symptoms occur here in the schizophrenic as delusions or hallucinations on.
One can differentiate between schizomanische, schizodepressive and mixed forms. The course can run phasic (ie, in alternating episodes ) or chronifizierend with a Residualsyndrom (ie, a persistent impairment ). Schizomanische episodes should have a slightly better prognosis than the schizodepressive form, which tends to seem more likely to become chronic.
Demarcation for affective disorder and schizophrenia
A severe affective disorder may also have psychotic symptoms, but it is the content usually occurring mania match ( synthym ) to the mood of depression or mania. In depression, the person concerned may, for example, to blame delusion suffer ( I have loaded some blame on me that I can never put in order ) to impoverishment delusion (I'll have no more money and starve ) or nihilistic delusions (there's me not at all). Also relationship or delusions of jealousy and paranoia still belong to the affective disorders with psychotic symptoms (see ICD -10 F32.3x, criterion D). In mania often occurs megalomania. The following table classifies the psychotic symptoms of mood disorder according as synthym ( with the mood matched) or parathym:
To speak of a schizoaffective disorder, must be met during the same disorder episode in addition to the presence of affective disorder of the following criteria and must not be due to an organic disease or psychoactive substances be (ICD -10 criteria for F25):
The delineation of schizophrenia, which almost always goes hand in hand with affective symptoms, is the significantly lower incidence of "negative symptoms " such as disorders of thought, language, concentration, self-organization, etc. One thus distinguishes the schizophrenic disorder and schizoaffective disorder based on the impairment of cognitive performance.
Diagnostics
In the last few years have seen a marked increase in psychiatric clinics the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder positions. Critics say this increase also was linked so that an unambiguous assignment of disease symptoms in the border area of a mood disorder, psychosis or personality disorder (possibly under the influence of drugs ) will problematic - partly as a result of ever shorter residence times in the clinics. Accordingly, there is still no clear agreement as to whether this disease syndrome should really form a separate category with regard to the biological etiology and treatment options. No changes in the brain of a person identifiable - are by imaging methods - as with most mental illnesses.
Therapy
The treatment of schizoaffective disorder depends on the symptoms. The phase prophylaxis consists mainly in the combination of a Phasenprophylaktikums with an ( atypical ) antipsychotic. More rarely a modern antipsychotic alone used prophylactically.