Dr. B here in our series demystifying the DSM and we are on psychotic disorders. Today I'm going to be talking about schizoaffective disorder, so if you came across this just in like a search for schizoaffective disorders, it's going to be important to also look at the schizophrenia video and either the bipolar or depressive videos. Because Schizoaffective brings in those symptoms. And if I'm talking to practitioners the differential diagnosis here sometimes gets confusing, and I have seen people putting schizoaffective and I might have said bipolar with psychotic features. You will see differences in diagnosis among providers and to our clients that are listening. That's OK, right? Unfortunately, mental health is not as black and white as other symptoms in the body, right? Our neurological system and how we present has a lot to do with our environment, how we're raised Our culture You know, Schizoaffective is basically saying that you meet that first criteria for schizophrenia, so go back and look at that That's where you have two of these five symptoms, delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, you must have at least two of those. So, you're meeting those basic criteria for schizophrenia, but then there's this concurrent mood piece, right? So affective means mood and schizo means schizophrenia and affective means mood. So schizoaffective means you are meeting those basic criteria for schizophrenia, but maybe not the negative symptoms or the severe functional decline that you see in schizophrenia. But there's this strong affective component that is there even when we get the psychotic piece in remission. So, when we're treating someone with schizoaffective, we are treating the psychosis first and then the mood second. So oftentimes you'll see the psychotic symptoms decrease and then we have to maybe add an antidepressant or do something specific like an anticonvulsant or a mood stabilizer to treat the affective part. So, in schizoaffective we have two types, we have the bipolar type. Go and look at the bipolar video, which I haven't done yet, but it'll be in the series and the depressive type. Ok, so that means that they're meeting criteria for schizophrenia part A and they are meeting criteria for either bipolar or depression. And that's how we get that schizoaffective diagnosis. But don't be discouraged if you are someone who is diagnosed with that and you're like well, but somebody else said I was bipolar. The reality is here at Mentally STRONG, we treat symptoms and receptors, not DSM diagnosis because DSM diagnosis are really just a cluster of symptoms that don't necessarily go with our neurological circuits. And remember when we're talking about psychotic disorders, we are likely going to have to treat it with medication. Here at Mentally STRONG we are going to take that schizoaffective diagnosis and look at you personally and say what symptoms are you presenting with and how can we treat those. And honestly, we might treat someone with you know, bipolar psychotic features with some of the same medications so don't own your diagnosis as who you are. Just know that these are the symptoms that you are presenting, and psychotic symptoms need to be treated with medication. The affective part of what's going on in the bipolar depression. The maybe you've experienced trauma. That's going to be treated with the Mentally STRONG Method and those with a schizoaffective diagnosis can come learn to function You know, especially with medication and therapy. Function and get control of those symptoms. So that's how we do it here. At Mentally STRONG we treat with medication and counseling.