Let's Kill the Schizoaffective Diagnosis

Following is a chopped (or should I say slashed?) version of a new article on mcmanweb (with the rather less provocative title of "Schizoaffective Disorder"), which in turn is based on copy-and-paste of extracts from several mcmanweb articles on psychosis and various diagnostic headaches in bipolar ...

Think of schizoaffective as occupying that middle ground where bipolar overlaps with schizophrenia. But what are we dealing with? Schizophrenia lite, BP heavy, a separate illness, two co-occurring illnesses, or something occupying the psychosis spectrum?

The DSM-5, which is scheduled to replace the current DSM-IV in 2013, spells it out: "The current DSM-IV-TR diagnosis schizoaffective disorder is unreliable," but then makes no changes to make the diagnosis reliable.

What We’re Up Against

A number of years back, the International Society for Bipolar Disorders came up with their own recommendations for improving the diagnostic criteria for bipolar. According to their report, genetic studies lend credence to an overlap between bipolar and schizophrenia, with a clustering of both in family groups, and shared suspect genes in both illnesses.

Schizoaffective is thought to occur in less than one percent of the general population (women predominate), but the patient population is much higher owing to clinicians making the diagnosis when they are uncertain.

In schizoaffective, "there must be a mood episode that is concurrent with active-phase symptoms of schizophrenia." This is different than a "mood disorder with psychotic features" or "mood symptoms in schizophrenia." Not that it's easy to tell. Confounding matters is the discomforting reality that schizoaffective is a moving target - the relative proportion of mood to psychotic symptoms may change over the course of the disturbance, not to mention over the long term. Not surprisingly, most patients who receive an initial diagnosis of schizoaffective are later diagnosed with something else.

With all this in mind, the ISBD panel considering the matter recommended eliminating the designation, schizoaffective, in its entirety and substituting it with additional specifiers to schizophrenia, bipolar I, bipolar II, and major depression.

Another Perspective ...

In a research article, psychiatric geneticists Craddock and Owen contend that the current definition of schizoaffective disorder is too narrow to be clinically useful. Instead, it is treated as a glorified "NOS" diagnosis. Compared with the much broader definitions of schizophrenia and mood disorders, "it is inevitable" that the schizoaffective category will seem less reliable to clinicians. This is especially true if clinicians pay little attention to the different ways psychosis presents itself over time.

Despite the lack of respect for schizoaffective, the authors note that "genetic epidemiology supports a strong genetic component to schizoaffective illness." Based on their findings, the authors suggest the concept of "schizoaffective spectrum phenotype" incorporating various shades of mood and psychosis.

What Are We Looking At?

At a 2007 "Deconstructing Psychosis" planning session sponsored by the American Psychiatric Association, the NIMH, and WHO, Carol Tamminga MD of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center noted that although mood stabilizers alone can treat psychotic symptoms in acute mania, they are not effective in treating psychosis in schizophrenia. Dr Tamminga offered three possible explanations:

Psychosis has a distinct pathophysiology, common to both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and antipsychotics target that molecular mechanism; 2) psychosis is mediated by neural systems which are different in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which can be stimulated and treated from multiple points and by many different pharmacologic strategies; and 3) psychosis is a response analogous to "fever" and should not be a primary target for treatment.

Trying to Make Sense of All This

The operative phrase to the DSM-IV schizoaffective diagnosis is:

There is either a Major Depressive Episode, a Manic Episode, or a Mixed Episode concurrent with symptoms that meet Criterion A for Schizophrenia.

Criterion A lists other symptoms besides psychosis, and calls for a minimum time of one month. (There is a Criterion C for schizophrenia, which mandates a six-month minimum for "continuous signs of the disturbance," but there is no reference to this in the schizoaffective diagnosis.)

Schizoaffective, then, is basically short-form schizophrenia punctuated by relatively brief overlays of depression or mania (the DSM minimum for mania, for instance, is one week). The assumption is that it is highly likely that there will be long periods when the schizophrenia symptoms manifest with no mood symptoms, and indeed this is a DSM requirement.

Thus, schizophrenia symptoms can appear without mood symptoms, but mood symptoms can't appear without schizophrenia symptoms.

Does this sound like schizophrenia to you? Short form or not? Say, schizophrenia with mood symptoms? Is schizoaffective, then, a euphemism diagnosis for clinicians too chicken to tell their patients the truth? It appears that way.

Let's kill the schizoaffective diagnosis, then, and go with the ISBD specifiers approach. Their recommendations:

In schizophrenia, these specifiers::

1. With symptoms meeting criteria for mania or mixed features.
2. With symptoms meeting criteria for major depressive disorder.

In bipolar I and II and major depression, these specifiers:

1. With psychotic symptoms meeting Criterion A for schizophrenia (ie hallucinations or delusions over one month) and for at least two weeks without prominent mood features.
2. With psychotic symptoms meeting Criterion A for schizophrenia with consistent concurrent mood features.

Meanwhile, Back in the Real World ...

A few questions you need to be asking:

Is your psychiatrist using the diagnosis to bring your clinical condition into sharper relief? In other words, has a competent clinician who really knows you figured out that your bipolar comes with serious complications? And if so, is he or she ready to work with you - including spending extra time with you - in helping you manage?

Or has your psychiatrist basically given up on you? In other words, is your diagnosis a result of the frustration of a lazy clinician who barely knows you and has already written you off as untreatable?

Or is your psychiatrist over-reacting? In other words, is your diagnosis the result of a lazy clinician who barely knows you and assumes that anything that even remotely resembles psychosis must be connected to schizophrenia or schizoaffective? In other words, are you about to be over-treated and over-medicated?

What's in a name? Sometimes nothing. Sometimes everything.

The People’s DSM: My Alternative Bipolar (Cycling) Diagnosis - Part III

Thus far (in Part I and Part II), I have kept what I refer to as “cycling illness” simple. As long as we appreciate that down and up are connected as different phases in the same cycle, there is little room for confusion. But there is a major complication called psychosis. If the psychosis is severe enough and prevalent enough, suddenly clinicians are faced with some very tricky diagnostic calls.

The current DSM recognizes psychosis as an illness in its own right and acknowledges its occurrence in other illnesses, including depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia, not to mention the hybrid diagnosis of schizoaffective. In theory, clinicians have a rough guide to work with. In practice, uncertainty prevails, namely:

How, precisely, does psychosis tie in to mood? And, while we’re at it, is there actually one person in the whole wide world who can explain schizoaffective, much less the reason for its existence?

Brain science and genetics promise to yield far more definitive answers than we presently have, which may explain why the draft DSM-5 changed virtually nothing. My view is we need to do our best based on the knowledge we have now, even if future scientific discovery proves us wrong. Let’s get to work:

The current DSM treats “with psychotic features” as a specifier to bipolar rather than to depression or mania. Let’s keep the specifier approach, but find more precise applications, thus:

Euphoric Mania with Psychosis

Various euphoric mania characteristics (such as enhanced positive abilities) may manifest as delusional thinking or hallucinations, in which the subject may see him or herself or his or her situation in a grossly exaggerated light (such as a superman on a special humanitarian mission).

Dysphoric Mania (Mixed) with Psychosis

Various dysphoric mania characteristics (such as enhanced negative abilities) may manifest as delusional thinking or hallucinations, in which the subject may see him or herself or his or her situation in a grossly exaggerated light (such as the only one in the world aware of a vast conspiracy).

And a copy and paste from the Alternative Depression Diagnosis Part II:

Vegetative (or Mixed) Depression with Psychosis

Various vegetative domain characteristics (such as excessive guilt) may manifest as delusional thinking or hallucinations, in which the subject may see him or herself as deserving of punishment (such as being tracked by agents for an imaginary crime).

Agitated (or Mixed) Depression with Psychosis

Various agitated domain characteristics (such as a sense of exaggerated bad luck) may manifest as delusional thinking or hallucinations, in which the subject may see him or herself as the object of unwarranted harassment (such as being tracked by agents as a result of a frame-up).

***

Thus, in these situations, psychosis is strongly linked to different phases of the cycle in terms of both timing and congruency. When the mania recedes, for instance, so does the psychosis. This suggests mood stabilizers as a first option rather than an antipsychotic.

If, on the other hand, the psychosis appears have a life independent of the cycle, then the clinician needs to spell it out, such as: “Cycling l, with Co-Occurring Psychotic Disorder.” (The current DSM lists “Delusional Disorder” and “Brief Psychotic Disorder”.)

This suggests different treatment options, such as an antipsychotic for the psychosis plus a mood stabilizer for the cycle (with perhaps the antipsychotic serving double duty in lieu of a mood stabilizer).

It is important to emphasize that psychosis with a life of its own is not synonymous with schizophrenia. Generally, more is going on with schizophrenia than just psychosis. Nevertheless, a very compelling case can be made for an overlap between bipolar and schizophrenia. Unfortunately, the DSM’s ‘tweener diagnosis of schizoaffective is more of a problem than a solution. Thus:

Kill the Schizoaffective Diagnosis

The operative phrase to the schizoaffective diagnosis is: “There is either a Major Depressive Episode, a Manic Episode, or a Mixed Episode concurrent with symptoms that meet Criterion A for Schizophrenia.”

Criterion A lists other symptoms besides psychosis, and calls for a minimum time of one month. (There is a Criterion C for schizophrenia, which mandates a six-month minimum for “continuous signs of the disturbance,” but there is no reference to this in the schizoaffective diagnosis.)

Schizoaffective, then, is basically short-form schizophrenia punctuated by relatively brief overlays of depression or mania (the DSM minimum for mania, for instance, is one week). The assumption is that it is highly likely that there will be long periods when the schizophrenia symptoms manifest with no mood symptoms, and indeed this is a DSM requirement.

Thus, schizophrenia symptoms can appear without mood symptoms, but mood symptoms can’t appear without schizophrenia symptoms.

Does this sound like schizophrenia to you? Short form or not? Say, schizophrenia with mood symptoms? Is schizoaffective, then, a euphemism diagnosis for clinicians too chicken to tell their patients the truth? It appears that way.

Let’s kill the schizoaffective diagnosis, then. And while we’re at it, let’s rethink schizophrenia, complete with a name that accurately describes the illness. But that’s for later, along with a full review of psychosis. In the meantime, to sum up:

1. When the psychosis can be linked to a phase of the cycle: Specify the phase within the cycling diagnosis.
2. When the psychosis appears independent of the cycle but does not meet criteria for schizophrenia: Stick to cycling diagnosis, with a co-occurring psychotic disorder.
3. When the psychosis appears related to schizophrenia: Go with a schizophrenia diagnosis, with a mood symptoms specifier.

Please note that I do not regard this draft as anything approaching the final word. If you have your own approach to breaking down psychosis, or can think of a hybrid bipolar-schizophrenia diagnosis that makes sense - or for that matter can make a good case for not fixing what ain’t broken - then, please, let’s hear from you.