What Schizoaffective Disorder Is And What It Isn’t (A Collaborative Overview)

In this post, I’d like to talk a little bit about my experience with schizoaffective disorder, as someone who is diagnosed and living with it.

If you have any amendments to suggest to this write-up, please make them in the comments!

Thank you!

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What schizoaffective disorder is:

Schizoaffective disorder is a severe mental illness, that is basically schizophrenia, PLUS major depression OR bipolar disorder.

While it’s NOT clinically looked at as two separate illnesses, the tenants of the condition are formed with symptoms from two disorders.

Since those with mental illness, often experience different symptoms, I would like to share with you a bit about my experience, independent of what I personally go through symptom-wise, as I have already written about that extensively.

(Please go here for more on what I personally go through.)

Common illness related issues:

Anxiety

(Mania)

Depression

Delusions

Hallucinations

Non-illness related issues (that may be a contributing factor to getting schizoaffective disorder):

Abuse

Poverty

Trauma

Pre-disposed

I don’t believe in healing mental illness, but I do think we owe it to ourselves to do our best “when we can,” which to me, includes returning to (or becoming) ourselves, healing our pasts (to the best of our ability), and whatever is generally necessary to manage our mental health!

Again, this is an overview, and I would like it if you would make it a collaborative one!

Do you believe in complete symptom remission with schizoaffective disorder (or any other severe mental illness)?

For me, I don’t believe complete remission is possible.

Some people with chronic illnesses, may find a way to be contributing members of society, but I personally have not been able to do much of anything in that realm!

I am not lazy, stupid, or a leech; but, I do require high doses of medication and that makes volunteering and working impossible while that is the case.

(There are a lot of things going on with me actually, so again please go here if you want to read more about them.)

I would like to hear about your experiences with recovery, and whether working a full-time job is/was sustainable at given intervals in your life.

This is a post about hope, yes, but I want to do my best not to delude that hope!

Thanks again!!!