About Schizoaffective Disorder
Schizoaffective disorder is a combination of mood, thought and anxiety disorder, so that symptoms of mania or depression and psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia may be present at the same time or within days of each other.
The most effective treatments for this condition include drug treatment in combination with therapy that focuses on social issues within the patient’s life.
There is a 1 in 200 chance of developing schizoaffective disorder, which usually begins in late adolescence or early adulthood, often between the ages of sixteen and thirty.
More women than men tend to suffer from schizoaffective disorder.
Schizoaffective disorder is a condition in which there are symptoms of mood (affect) disorders, like depression or mania, and symptoms of schizophrenia present at the same time, or within a few days of each other.
Usually the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder is given when the schizophrenic symptoms are more pronounced; if the mood disorder is more evident then the condition is more often called depressive or manic psychosis.
There are many different definitions of these conditions, and it can be difficult for the doctors to settle on a diagnosis.
About one in every two hundred people (0.5%) develops schizoaffective disorder at some time during his or her life, indicating that it is much less common than schizophrenia.
Some people believe that this low level of diagnosis does not represent the true level of the condition, and that many people are given an incorrect diagnosis instead of a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder.
More recently, in a clinical study of the illness, a quarter of all psychotic patients were eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.
