Schizoaffective Disorder

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Schizoaffective Disorder is the most poorly defined and understood diagnosis in the DSM-IV. It is mostly a grab bag of symptoms. Is there a comprehensive theory of the nature of schizoaffective disorder? What is the history of this diagnosis?

-- Don Lindsay (donlindsay@pacbell.net), March 19, 2001

Answers

The term "schizoaffective" was introduced by Kasanin in 1933 as a way of describing "borderline" schizophrenia and for a time it was considered another subtype of the illness. In DSM-IV the diagnosis is made when a patient meets the symptom criterion for schizophrenia in the presence of a depressive or manic mood episode. Discrimination of the disorder from mood disorders with psychotic features can be difficult. Schizoaffective disorder occurs disproportionately among the relatives of people with schizophrenia as well as among relatives of people with bipolar mood disorder. This has lead some researchers to theorize a "continuum of psychosis" with schizophrenia at one end, bipolar disorder at the other end, and schizoaffective disorder in the middle. See:

Kasanin, J. (1933). The acute schizo-affective psychoses. American Journal of Psychiatry, 97, 97-106.

Faraone, S., Tsuang, M., & Tsuang, D. (1999). Genetics of mental disorders. New York: Guilford, pp. 58-61.

-- Robert Walter Heinrichs (walterh@yorku.ca), March 28, 2001.


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