Schizoaffective Disorder

[Ullish]

I have recently been diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder which I understand to be somewhat of a mixture between Bipolar and Schizophrenia...but other than that I don't really know much except bits and pieces about Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia separately.

Has anyone else been diagnosed with this disorder or know someone who was/can shed some light on my situation?

[zoyajoy]

I don't have answers for you - but I sure hope someone does. This site is practically dead - so you may wait a month to get an answer. I don't even know why I keep coming back here.

[RonPrice]

Various behaviours, my depression and my euphoria, at the age of 19 or any of my behaviour before that last year of my teenage life(1963-1964), did not result in my receiving any medical attention. The first formal diagnosis of my illness was labelled a schizo-affective disorder(SAD) in 1968. SAD is a sort of hybrid condition that exists in between BPD and schizophrenia, although this distinction may be somewhat artificial. It may be inappropriate to have a discrete cut between the two disorders when both may represent part of a spectrum and symptoms of both disorders were part of my experience during the last half of 1968. This situation involved the possibility of a serious risk of harm to myself or others and required in July 1968 what is termed involuntary commitment to hospital. This case involved a severe BPD episode with dangerous-violent and aggressive behaviour as well as depressive episodes in August 1968 with suicidal ideation.
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One aspect of the five months in that immense psychiatric facility in Whitby Ontario that I would like to comment on is the short visits with my psychiatrists during “their rounds.” It was like a visit with God and it was always impossible to really say much. I remember spending much of my time trying to get appointments for long sessions. I've had experience, since then and with psychiatrists elsewhere, in clinics and private practice, who only see patients for short appointments. But in Whitby it was for a minute or two at best. I never felt like the docs or staff got to really know me, therefore I didn't trust their judgment. I now see my psychiatrist, more than 40 years later, for short medication management type appointments. Anything more is left to be discussed in less than half an hour. It's not expensive even when I require more frequent visits due to the Australian health care system. I've been seeing this same doctor for more than a decade.

In BPD episodes of depression occur alternately with manic or hypomanic episodes during which the mood becomes euphoric and labile, the capacity for deriving pleasure increases, behaviours aimed at deriving pleasure increase, energy and psychomotor activity, libido and self esteem become elevated. Thus, the same domains are implicated in depression and mania, although the characteristic disturbance in emotional behavior within these syndromes appears opposite with respect to emotional valance. Thus the clinical manifestations of mood disorders would appear to implicate the cognitive, emotional and visceral functions.

Mania, mild mania or hypomania are all real symptoms of BPD and they each have their origins in extra-neurotransmitter brain cells. These cells, due to neurochemical over-stimulation, begin to fire all at once for a sustained duration of time. This is a very disquieting symptom involving rapid and profuse synaptic activity that is quite tiring and can interfere with concentration and focus. This, in turn, can cause rapid, erratic thought patterns and ideas. People with mania often remain awake for days without normal sleeping intervals. The longest period of time I was awake was two or, perhaps, three days in May 1968. The experience became progressively more painful after 24 hours of no sleep. I had no mood-stabilizing medication at the time to slow the synaptic activity down. I do not recall any symptoms of mania in my late childhood or adolescent life. There were some periods of mania in the years 1963 to 1966 but not as intense as what I experienced in May 1968. If I had any mania in early childhood, I have no memory of such experience.

The boundaries between normality and abnormality, health and pathology are often blurred and indistinct. In addition these boundaries shift from person to person, doctor to doctor and decade to decade making one’s understanding of the problem more complex.

In retrospect, I now see the autumn of 1968 as the first formal diagnosis of my BPD, although I was not to personally receive/read that diagnosis until 1970 when I visited a psychiatrist in Kingston Ontario some two years after I was released from the large psychiatric hospital outside Toronto in the town of Whitby. This account could give a detailed story of the five months of institutionalized care: the ECTs, the medications, the occupational therapy, etc. At the age of 19 during the first manifestations of intense depression, though, I was given lots of advice from religious to common-sensical: diet, exercise, prayer, vitamins, interesting leisure distractions/interests like horse-riding, watching TV, music, et cetera. After several months to several years, 1963 to 1968, the emotional aberrations disappeared or could be said to be sub-threshold at least for a time. My episodes over those years and in the years December 1977 to June 1980 seemed to exhibit quite separate and distinct tendencies and patterns from those I had experiences in the 1960s.
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