You may have picked up on my changed diagnosis – from paranoid schizophrenia to schizoaffective disorder. For those unfamiliar with the label schizoaffective disorder, it is simply the compound of two terms: schizophrenia and affective (mood) disorder (such has bipolar disorder or major depression). Psychiatrists now conceptualize there to be a spectrum of disorders, with a classic schizophrenic presentation on one and a classic mood disorder presentation on the other. My changed diagnosis indicates that it appears that I’m not really at the end of the schizophrenic side of the spectrum like previously thought, but rather somewhere more near the middle.

               This was first hinted at early during my treatment due to subclinical mood swings. However, it wasn’t really confirmed for many years, as I had been relatively stable on meds and my dominate symptom has been paranoia. However, a little over a year ago I had gone off my medications (a story for another day), and within days I started becoming manic. Severe paranoia set in following the mania, and forced me back on medication. It was then that my diagnosis was changed to schizoaffective disorder, due to the presentation of a mixture of symptoms of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

               Due to the close relatedness of these disorders, our approach to treatment hasn’t been any different due to the new diagnosis. However, the prognosis for schizoaffective is better than that for schizophrenia and worse than bipolar disorder, so I suppose the change should spark some increased hope for me. To be completely honest, it hasn’t given me any new hope, but it has allowed me to understand better some of the impulsive things I had been doing, e.g. drinking, gambling, etc.