Schizoaffective disorder Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Schizoaffective disorder - Essay Example For a full diagnosis of this disorder to be verified, there should be a period of at least two weeks where the patient displays psychosis without mood disorder, and these symptoms of psychosis should not be due to the use of medication or other substances. Schizoaffective disorder tends to affect an individual’s perception and emotions and this result in false perceptions as well as disordered thought processes, which include delusions, disorganized speech, and thought process. Due to this, it is very common for those affected by this disorder to have dysfunctions in both their social and occupational lives. The division into depressive and bipolar types of schizoaffective disorder depends on whether an individual has ever had manic, hypomanic or mixed episodes, and symptoms for this disorder normally occur in early adulthood, with symptoms rarely occurring before the age of thirteen (Diabetes Week, 2009). A person who has this disorder tends to experience extreme transformati ons in mood and has some of the psychotic symptoms, which are related to schizophrenia such as hallucinations. The psychotic symptoms are reflected when a person is unable to differentiate between what is real from what is imagined, and these symptoms tend to vary greatly from one person to another (Dodd, 2010). While the symptoms may be mild for in certain individuals, they can manifest themselves very severely in others. Some of the symptoms, which are displayed when one has schizoaffective disorder, are the following: depression, mania, and schizophrenia. Cases of depression in schizoaffective disorder are always accompanied by various characteristics such as the loss of appetite and this tends to result in the loss of weight. Furthermore, the individual’s sleeping patterns also change so that this individual my sleep a lot or very little, depending on their situation. Depression is always accompanied by excessive restlessness as well as a lack of energy in the body. The i ndividual experiences a lack of interest in those activities that he or she was very active in. there are times when an individual may have feelings of being worthless or hopeless and this can bring about guilt or self–blame. Depression may also bring about the inability to think coherently or to concentrate, and the individual may be tempted to resort to suicide as a result. Schizoaffective disorder is often accompanied by mania, which results in the increase in activity of the affected person, and these include work, social, and sexual activities. Mania also results in the increased talking of the individual due to the rapid and racing thoughts, which are common symptoms of mania. An individual feels very little need for sleep and may in fact prefer staying up late trying to do other activities. The individual might also be very agitated about nothing important in particular. Furthermore, there is a chance that mania might result in the individual having a very low self-est eem and this brings about very destructive behavior such as having unsafe sex, having spending sprees, as well as driving recklessly. Schizophrenia is one of the signs, which enable nurses to identify that a person does in fact, have schizoaffective disorder (Martin, 2007). One of the symptoms of schizophrenia is delusions; this is where an individual has very strange beliefs, which have no real basis in reality, and he or she holds on to these beliefs even when they are presented with facts to the contrary.