What Is Schizophrenia Bipolar Disorder

What Causes These Disorders

After years of research, doctors still dont know what causes schizophrenia. They think that chemical imbalances of dopamine and glutamate might play a role. Also, they know that people with schizophrenia often have physically different brains than those who dont. This might indicate that it happens during the development of the brain itself.

Doctors havent studied schizoaffective disorder for nearly as long. However, theyve made more breakthroughs. For example, doctors believe that the genes that control the bodys natural sleep and wake cycle contribute to this disorder.

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Diagnostic Criteria For Bipolar Schizoaffective Disorder

Simply experiencing some of the symptoms of bipolar schizoaffective disorder may not be enough to be given an official diagnosis. There are specific criteria for diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, and these should be evaluated by a mental health professional during a psychiatric assessment. Diagnosis requires an experienced professional because it is easy to confuse this condition with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and to make an inaccurate diagnosis. The criteria for bipolar type schizoaffective disorder include:

• A period of time in which a person experiences both the symptoms of schizophrenia and the symptoms of bipolar disorder at the same time.
• A person must also experience symptoms of psychosis, delusions or hallucinations for at least two weeks without the presence of bipolar symptoms.
• The bipolar symptoms must be present for most of the time a person experiences mental health symptoms.
• It is very important for a diagnosis that drug use as a cause of symptoms can be ruled out.

What Should You Not Say To Someone With Bipolar

9 Things Not to Say to Someone Who Has Bipolar DisorderYoure Just Overreacting AgainAnything That Doesnt Kill You Makes You StrongerEverybody Has Mood Swings SometimesEveryone Is a Little Bipolar SometimesYou Are PsychoYoure Acting Like a ManiacI Wish I Was Manic so I Could Get Things DoneMore items

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The Different Types Of Schizophrenia

Mental health disorders are complicated and can be hard to diagnose. Often, people have overlapping symptoms or more than one disorder at the same time. Because of these variations, mental health disorders are often classified by broad term first and then broken down into more specific disorders. One such example is with schizophrenia.

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Who Will Manage My Treatment

There are different NHS mental health teams that can support and treat you. Health professionals from different backgrounds work in the teams shown below. They work together to help you get better.

What is an NHS Early intervention in psychosis team ?

An NHS Early intervention in psychosis team can support you if you experience psychosis for the first time.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends that early intervention services should be open to people of all ages.

You should be referred to the EIT without delay. Your local EIT will aim to first see you within 14 days.

You can sometimes self-refer to your local EIT. This means that you can contact them and ask for help, without first seeing your GP or another medical professional. Sometimes your family or friends can refer you too.

You should be able to find your local EIT on the internet. You can use a use a search term like NHS early intervention psychosis team Leicestershire. Or you can call NHS 111 and ask for contact details for your local team,or ask your GP to refer you.

What is an NHS community mental health team ?

A community mental health team can support you to recover from mental health issues. They can give you short or long-term care and treatment in the community. You might move from an Early intervention in psychosis team to a CMHT if you need longer term care.

You usually need to be referred to CMHT by your GP or another medical or social care professional.

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How Is Schizoaffective Disorder Diagnosed

A psychiatrist will diagnose schizoaffective disorder after a mental health assessment. It might take more than one assessment for the psychiatrist to reach a diagnosis. You may get a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder if you have depressive or manic symptoms with symptoms of schizophrenia.

Psychiatrists will use the following manuals to help to diagnose you:

• International Classification of Diseases produced by the World Health Organisation
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual produced by the American Psychiatric Association.

The manuals are guides which explain different mental health conditions and their symptoms. They also explain how long certain symptoms should last for before a diagnosis should be made.

To get a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder you should have had a combination of symptoms of both psychosis and bi-polar disorder. Your symptoms should be clearly there for at least 2 weeks.

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Treatment Options For Bipolar Disorder

The good news: Most instances of bipolar disorder are treatable and manageable. Treatments come with medication, cognitive behavioral remedy, psychotherapy, and, in those uncommon instances when medications do not succeed in regulate of the episode, electroconvulsive therapy.

Medication is probably the most universally effective option and is, due to this fact, the first step in most bipolar remedy plans. Bipolar drugs stabilize moods and steady the seesaw of mania/despair permitting you to go back in your day by day regimen and to function more or less in most cases. The maximum usually prescribed medication is lithium, a temper stabilizer thats been used to regard bipolar disorder for greater than 60 years. Experts are still no longer slightly certain how lithium works, but the primary hypothesis is that it interacts with neurotransmitters to your brain that contribute to both mania and despair. Other medicine choices include benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, or anticonvulsants, even though each and every come with their own uncomfortable side effects and ranging charges of efficacy.

In many instances, medicine is now not enough to fully keep watch over the indications of bipolar disorder. This is where therapy is available in, to fill within the gaps and boost the entire effectiveness of your remedy plan.

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What Is Schizophrenia And Its Symptoms

Schizophrenia involves a variety of cognition problems, emotions, and behavior. The signs and symptoms of it vary, but they almost always include hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, and displays of an impaired ability to function. Below are the main signs and symptoms that indicate a person has schizophrenia, as noted by the Mayo Clinic.

Delusions: False beliefs not based on reality. Examples may include that a person may think certain comments or gestures are aimed at them, the person feels they are being harmed or harassed, or the person believes they are exceptional.

Hallucinations: Seeing or hearing things not present or do not exist. The individual with schizophrenia believes what they are seeing or hearing is normal when nothing is neither seen nor heard by others. Most often, hearing voices is the most usual hallucination.

Disorganized thinking : Disorganized thinking and thoughts, disorganized speech, which presents as answers to questions partially or completely unrelated.

Relationship Between Schizophrenia And Bipolar Disorder

Traditional clinically ascertained family studies during the 20th century, employing main-lifetime diagnoses, generally did not find a significant excess of bipolar disorder among the relatives of individuals with schizophrenia, or vice versa,,,, supporting the concept of an etiological dichotomy between the 2 disorders. However, these studies could not exclude a degree of familial coaggregation due to sample size limitations.

Consistent with this, a twin study, based on the Maudsley twin register in London, found no co-occurrence of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in MZ twin pairs when a hierarchical main-lifetime diagnosis was employed, again with the caveat of sample size limitations. However, when a nonhierarchical lifetime-ever approach was taken, significant coaggregation was seen between schizophrenic and manic episodes in twin pairs, and model-fitting showed a significant genetic correlation of 0.68 between lifetime-ever schizophrenia and mania.

Additionally, a meta-analysis of family studies published between 1980 and 2006 found evidence of familial overlap, with the first-degree relatives of probands who had schizophrenia showing a significantly elevated risk of bipolar disorder compared with relatives of controls .

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What Is Schizophrenia

The NIMH, Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia may seem like they have lost touch with reality.

The onset of schizophrenic symptoms usually occurs between the ages of 16 – 30. The symptoms are divided into three categories.

Positive symptoms are the first category of symptoms. They are called positive because they are added behaviors. These symptoms are psychotic behaviors that aren’t regularly found in healthy people. These symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, dysfunctional thoughts, or movement disorders.

Negative symptoms are the second type of symptoms. Negative symptoms are changes or disruptions to regular behaviors and emotions. These symptoms remove regular behaviors. These symptoms include reduced emotional facial expressions or a monotone voice, reduced feelings of happiness in your daily life, difficulty beginning and continuing activities, and even less speaking.

Cognitive symptoms are the third type of schizophrenic symptoms. The severity of cognitive symptoms can vary from person to person. For some, these symptoms can be severe, and for others, they may not be. Some of these symptoms include problems with comprehending information and using the information for decision making, trouble with focusing, and trouble with working memory.

What Are The Long

Bipolar disorder is a life-long and often recurring illness. You may need long term support to help manage your condition.

What medication options are there?

Your doctor will look at what medication worked for you during episodes of mania or depression. They should ask you whether you want to continue this treatment or if you want to change to lithium.

Lithium usually works better than other types of medication for long-term treatment. Your doctor should give you information about how to take lithium safely. If lithium doesn’t work well enough or causes you problems, you may be offered:

• Valproate,
• Olanzapine, or
• Quetiapine.

Your doctor should monitor your health. Physical health checks should be done at least once a year. These checks will include:

• measuring your weight,
• checking your liver and heart, and
• checking your pulse and blood pressure.

What psychological treatments are recommended?

You should be offered a psychological therapy that is specially designed for bipolar disorder. You could have individual or group therapy.

The aim of your therapy is to stop you from becoming unwell again. This is known as relapse. Your therapy should help you to:

If you live with your family or are in close contact with them, you should also be offered family intervention.

Family intervention is where you and your family work with mental health professionals to help to manage relationships. This should be offered to people who you live with or who you are in close contact with.

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Where Do I Go For Help

If youre not sure where to get help, your doctor, pediatrician, or other family health care provider is a good place to start. A health care provider can refer you to a qualified mental health professional, such as a psychiatrist or psychologist, who has experience treating bipolar disorder and can evaluate your childs symptoms.

Rose Hill Center Can Help You Overcome Both Disorders

While theres clearly a difference between these two disorders, it doesnt have to change where you get help. At Rose Hill Center, we understand the differences between the two. For that reason, we offer different treatment options at one location.

At Rose Hill Center, we strive to offer a variety of treatment services for mental health problems. A few of these include:

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Symptoms Of Bipolar Disorder

People with bipolar disorder experience episodes of intense emotions. These include three main types of episodes:

• Manic episodes are times of increased activity and energy. A manic episode can make you feel extremely happy or elated.
• Hypomanic episodes are similar to manic episodes, but theyre less intense.
• Depressive episodes are similar to those of people with major depression. A person having a depressive episode will feel severely depressed and lose interest in activities that they used to enjoy.

To be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, you have to have at least one episode of depression that meets the criteria for a major depressive episode. You must also have at least one episode that meets the criteria for a manic or hypomanic episode.

Other behavioral changes that may be symptoms of bipolar disorder include:

• restlessness
• extreme self-confidence and impulsivity, in the case of a manic episode
• suicidal thoughts, in the case of a depressive episode

People with bipolar disorder can also experience psychotic symptoms during a manic or depressive episode. These can include hallucinations or delusions. Because of this, people may mistake their symptoms of bipolar disorder for those of schizophrenia.

What Are The Danger Variables For Bipolar Disorder

Patients with depressing usually are asked to being in front of a light-emitting box for at least thirty minutes first point in the early morning. Some people likewise take advantage of a session around sundown difference between bipolar depression schizophrenia, Rohan states. All youngsters get moody sometimes, especially if theyre dealing with something testing like a battle with a friend or a harsh patch at college.

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What Is Schizoaffective Disorder

Schizoaffective disorder is a chronic mental health condition that involves symptoms of both schizophrenia and a mood disorder like major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder. In fact, many people with schizophrenia are incorrectly diagnosed at first with depression or bipolar disorder.

Scientists donât know for sure if schizoaffective disorder is related mainly to schizophrenia or a mood disorder. But itâs usually viewed and treated as a combination of both conditions.

Only a tiny number of people get schizoaffective disorder — .03% of the population. Itâs equally likely to affect men and women, but men usually get it at a younger age. Doctors can help manage it, but most people diagnosed with it have relapses. People who have it often have problems with substance use as well.

Treatment Of Schizoaffective Disorder

Treatment includes:

• Medication: What you take depends on whether you have symptoms of depression or bipolar disorder, along with symptoms that suggest schizophrenia. The main medications that doctors prescribe for psychotic symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking are called antipsychotics. All these drugs can probably help with schizoaffective disorder, but paliperidone extended release is the only drug that the FDA has approved to treat it. For mood-related symptoms, you might take an antidepressant medication or a mood stabilizer.
• Psychotherapy: The goal of this type of counseling is to help you learn about your illness, set goals, and manage everyday problems related to the disorder. Family therapy can help families get better at relating to and helping a loved one who has schizoaffective disorder.
• Skills training: This generally focuses on work and social skills, grooming and self-care, and other day-to-day activities, including money and home management.
• Hospitalization: Psychotic episodes may require a hospital stay, especially if youâre suicidal or threaten to hurt others.
• Electroconvulsive therapy: This treatment may be an option for adults who donât respond to psychotherapy or medications. It involves sending a quick electric current through your brain. It causes a brief seizure. Doctors use it because they think it changes your brain chemistry and may reverse some conditions.

This condition may raise your risk of:

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How Does Psychotherapy Treat Schizoaffective Disorder

During therapy, the person talks to a trained mental health professional. The goal of psychotherapy is for the person to:

• Learn about the illness.
• Establish goals.
• Manage everyday problems related to the disorder.

Family therapy can also help. A therapist can help families learn how to cope with the illness and support their loved one. Family therapy helps improve symptoms and quality of life for the person with the disorder.

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Bipolar Disorder Vs Schizophrenia

• Bipolar disorder is an illness that involves mood swings with at least one episode of mania and may also involve repeated episodes of depression.
• Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, debilitating mental illness characterized by psychotic symptoms, meaning that one is out of touch with reality.
• Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are not directly inherited genetically but are likely due to complex genetic, psychological, and environmental risk factors.
• Since there is no one test that determines the presence of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, health care professionals diagnose these illnesses by gathering medical, family, and mental health information and performing physical and mental assessments.
• Medication treatment of bipolar disorder tends to relieve already existing symptoms of mania or depression and prevent symptoms from returning. Antipsychotic medications are most effective in decreasing the positive symptoms of schizophrenia.
• Psychosocial interventions help treat both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

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Understanding The Subtle Differences

The difference between schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia is often hard to spot. The reason is that a lot of the symptoms overlap. For example, doctors typically characterize schizoaffective disorder by the mood disorders that accompany it. However, its not uncommon for people with schizophrenia to experience manic or depressive moods as well.

If both experience mood disorders, how can specialists tell the difference? The key difference between schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia is the prominence of the mood disorder. With schizoaffective disorder, the mood disorder is front and center. With schizophrenia, its not a dominant part of the disorder.

Another difference is the psychotic symptoms that people experience. With schizophrenia, the psychotic symptoms are dominant. With schizoaffective disorder, episodes of psychosis may occur.

However, it takes trained professionals to spot the differences between the two. After all, the symptoms typically start when people reach their 20s. Also, they can cause hallucinations and delusions.