Schizoaffective vs Bipolar?

[manic_felinemistress]

As it stands my psychiatrist says I have bipolar II, but I could have schizoaffective disorder bipolar type. What is the difference? I have done research on it and they're so similiar I don't understand how you would even tell the difference...
He did say it did not matter which I have because they are treated the same, but it's been eating at me.

My symptoms generalized:
-Moodswings
-Insominia
-Night terrors
-Neurosis
-Impulsive
-Paranoid half the time
-Mania
-Occassional delrium
-Psychotic episodes which last 2-10 months
-No concept of time (1 minute, 2 hours, 20 min, 8 hours, a week, a few months... they're all the same to me)

In a documentary I saw once it said that having no sense of time is part of bipolar disorder... I don't understand why though. :blink:

Anyway I appricate feedback!

[PaleMoon]

I'm not a psychiatrist, but as far as I know from my own research, bipolar disorder is what is known as an affective disorder, or an illness of the mood. The sufferer goes from very high highs to very low lows, sometimes rapidly.

Whereas schizoaffective disorder combines symptoms of an affective disorder and psychosis, but in order to be diagnosed as schizoaffective, the mood symptoms and psychosis cannot happen together (i.e., psychosis as a result of a manic phase).

So basically, your doctor is saying you experience psychosis, but also bipolar-like symptoms. It is more difficult to recover from than a simple affective disorder, but with the right medication and possibly psychotherapy, you can do it.

[random.swirls]

Yeah in bipolar the psychosis occurs as part of a mood swing - e.g. during mania or depression or a mixed state.

In schizoaffective you will have psychosis outside of a mood swing but unlike in say schizophrenia you will also have the mood swings.

[beautiful_seclusion]

yeah i have schizoaffective. So i will get psychotic even when I'm having no mood symptoms and have a lot of the features of schizophrenia. And other times I will be having mania/depression which can also have psychosis with it in addition to the moodless psychosis. I didn't know having bad sense of time had to do with this disorder, that makes sense because I sometimes have a very bad sense of time! anyway, yeah from what i understand schizoaffective is basically where you have some features of bipolar and some of schizophrenia and they kinda mix together at times. I'm glad you're getting support cause it's such an awful disorder to go through alone.

[manic_felinemistress]

When I have psychotic episodes I tend to just become more anxious and extremely paranoid, possibly slightly depressive and aggressive, but I don't really get moodswings. When I come out of the episode I have moodswings.

beautiful_seclusion - I'll forget what year it is sometimes! I can only laugh about it now x) I have alarms set for just about everything, but I'll forget what the alarms were for. I'm terribly forgetful. I write notes to myself in hopes that I'll remember something, then forget to check the notes or lose the paper!
Thank you.

[Fry]

You have psychotic episodes with no mood disturbance in schizo-affective disorder and mood episodes i.e mania with no psychosis in a separate episode. In any type of bipolar there are no separate episodes of psychosis without a mood disturbance. Psychosis in bipolar occurs at either the far end of mania or depression, both mood disturbances.
There are two types of schizo-affective disorder; schizo-affective depressive type and schizo-affective bipolar type (which I'm in recovery of :) )