Schizoaffective Disorder

Schizoaffective disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by recurring abnormal mood and psychotic components. The mood component may be elevated or depressed (bipolar or depressive subtype), or simultaneously elevated and depressed (mixed episode), and these abnormal mood components alternate with, or occur together with, distortions in perception. For a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder to be valid, according to current DSM criteria (but not ICD-10 criteria), there must be a period of at least two weeks of psychosis without mood disorder, and these symptoms cannot be due to medication(s), substance use or another medical condition.

Schizoaffective disorder most commonly affects cognition and emotion. False perceptions and disordered thought processes, such as auditory hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and/or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social and occupational dysfunction are typical. The division into depressive and bipolar types is based on whether the individual has ever had a manic, hypomanic or mixed episode. Symptoms usually begin in early adulthood; diagnosis prior to age 13 is rare.

Schizoaffective disorder belongs to the "schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders" proposed by the DSM-5 Workgroup, which includes schizophrenia, schizotypal personality disorder, schizophreniform disorder, brief psychotic disorder, delusional disorder, substance-induced psychotic disorder, both psychotic and catatonic disorders associated with a general medical condition, both unspecified psychotic and catatonic disorders and other unspecified psychotic disorder. This spectrum of psychotic disorders is comparable to the bipolar spectrum in bipolar disorder. Each named disorder on this continuum shares symptoms with the others, and some professionals (including the working group for the DSM-5) contend that the boundaries are so unclear that separate diagnostic labels are not necessarily warranted.