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Re: different types of schizophrenia???

Posted by med_empowered on August 18, 2005, at 17:53:47

In reply to Re: different types of schizophrenia???, posted by xbunny on August 18, 2005, at 17:42:41

schizophrenia is a kind of odd disease in that it has historically been diagnosed based on widely varying criteria and understood in hugely different terms. One *big* difference today is that in the US, lots of people who are diagnosed as schizophrenic would most likely be diagnosed as having some form of bipolar disorder in Europe and other areas where the ICD is favored over the DSM. In the US, shrinks have long stood by the "split" between bipolar (thought to be mostly, if not completely, a mood-disorder) and schizophrenia (conceived of as a mostly psychotic disorder w/ "secondary" mood issues popping up in some cases). The division between bipolar and schizophrenia is now thought to be much fuzzier than it was in the past; lots of shrinks have written about cases where a patient presents as bipolar and shifts into a disorder characterized by schizophrenia-type psychosis...also common are cases diagnosed as "schizophrenia" which then present with heavy mood components, sometimes to the point that the diagnosis is changed to bipolar, and the patient is found to be responsive to mood-stabilizers (some people with schizophrenia/schizoaffective have good responses to mood-stabilizers, making the bipolar/schizophrenia split all the more confusing). Anyway, I guess I'd say that these days, with atypical antipsychotics in use for schizophrenia, bipolar, anxiety, depression, and so on, it makes sense to have a more flexible view of mental issues....with so many psychiatric drugs being used for just about everything across the board, and lots of docs learning to medicate based on symptoms, not diagnosis per se, your exact diagnosis isn't as important as it would have been in the past. Plus, there's evidence that there may be considerable overlap in mentall illnesses; keep in mind that the DSM is created and updated based on committee vote, not ground-breaking research, so it should really just be considered a guide and clinician's "cliff notes" for mental illness, not the bible of mental health.


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