Essay on Schizoaffective disorder

Essay on Schizoaffective disorder
Essay on Schizoaffective disorder
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1Essay on Schizoaffective disorder
An essay on Schizoaffective Disorder (SAD)
Schizoaffective disorder (SAD) is a chronic, psychotic disorder. SAD often has
melancholy mood and psychotic symptoms such as hallucination, mood swing and depression.
Schizoaffective was defined by Kraepelin's nosological as bifurcation of two disorders. It is a
variant of schizophrenia and affective disorders, the patient illness is somewhere between these
two disorders. In the extreme case the patient either shows schizophrenia disorder or affective
disorder. Schizophrenia is a disorder that appears during adolescences or early childhood. The
disorder is characterized by hallucination, delusions, and other cognitive disorders. It is not easy
to overcome schizophrenia (Sekar et al., 2016). The cause can be genetic or environmental
factors such as genetic disorder in the family, chemical imbalance in the brain or social
relationship issues. The affective disorder is generally called as the mood disorder (Hayes et al.,
2015). It can appear at any stage of life. It is seen least in children and more in adolescences. It
generally affects the patient in the mid 30s as studied by the researchers (Coryell, 2016).
The DSM 5 methodology of identification of disease:
DSM 5 criteria, symptom identification
Schizoaffective disorder
Disorder Class Symptoms
Criteria A
a
Symptoms ( 2 (or
more) of the following,
present for a noticing
portion of time during
a two-month period
(or less if treated
successfully):
1. Delusion
2. Hallucinations
3. Incoherence Speech.
4. Disorganised.
5. Symptoms of negativity.Criteria B
Symptoms that shows
in the first month.
1. Decreased interest in activities.
2. Difficulty in concentration.

2Essay on Schizoaffective disorder
3. Insomnia.
4. A sense of out of control.
5. Depressed, angry, feeling worthless (Health
line, 2019).
c
Social/occupational
dysfunction:
For along duration the onset of the
disturbance can be noted at different level
of functioning in one or more major areas,
such as work, interpersonal relations, or
self-care. Or the onset is in childhood or
adolescence, there is lack of in achieving
expected level of interpersonal, academic,
or occupational functioning) (Heckers et al,
2016).
d
Duration
For at least six months continuous signs of
disturbance persist. The six month of
symptoms should have at least 1 month of
symptoms. Matching Criterion A (the
active-phase symptoms) and it can also
include periods of prodromal or residual
symptoms.
e
Schizoaffective &
Mood Disorder
exclusion:
Schizoaffective Disorder with Psychotic
Features can be ruled out if either
1. No Major Depressive or Mixed Episodes
have occurred continuously within the
active-phase symptoms;
2. The duration of the mood swing symptom
in the active phase is relatively short
(Biedermann & Fleischhacker, 2016).
f
Substance/general
medical condition
exclusion:
If the in any case the disturbance is not
because of direct physiological affects of
any substance such as a drug abuse, a
medication or any general medical condition
(Rink et al., 2016).

3Essay on Schizoaffective disorder
The above chart is based on DSM V method of analyzing the symptoms. It comprises of
the identification of the disease through better examination.
The demographic information based on Australia.
The psychotic illness is prevalent in most of the areas of Australia. A national survey is
done yearly to know the change in number of the affected patients. The national survey of
Mental Health and Well being 2017 of adult provides information on year prevalence of the
mental disorder in the Australian population (Goghari & Harrow, 2019).
The survey was done on the population age between16-85. It was estimated by the
studies that at least 45% of the population will suffer from mental disorder at any point in this
age. It has been found out that 1 in 5 had experienced a common mental disorder in last one year
which is around 4.9 million populations in 2017. The anxiety disorder was much prevalent than
the schizophrenia disorder. If the data is to be analyzed than it is found that 14.5% from anxiety
disorder, 6.2% of the population was suffering from Affective disorder, 5.1% from substance use
disorder, 3.% from schizoaffective disorder. It is a fact the most common disorder that is found
in the Australian population is the Schizophrenia recording to 47% of the population (Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare, 2017).
Schizoaffective age of onset:
The population is divided in age and the survey conducted produces the fact file of the
percentage of population affected in which age group.