Anxiety & Schizoaffective Disorder

Schizoaffective Disorder appears to be a combination of three separate disorders: thought, mood and anxiety disorders. However, anxiety is not so much a part of schizoaffective disorder but a separate condition often found to be concurrently suffered by schizoaffective patients.

Schizoaffective Disorder

• Schizoaffective disorder is a diagnosis of mental illness based on recurrent experiences of both psychosis (paranoia, hallucinations) and mood disorders (mania, depression).

Anxiety Disorder

• Anxiety disorders include several forms of pathological, irrational, and/or abnormal anxieties and fears that are often accompanied by physiological symptoms (e.g. nausea, headache, heart palpitations).

Features

• Considered a co-morbid condition of schizoaffective disorder, when present anxiety disorders subjectively influence the experiences of the schizoaffective patient and shape his delusional thoughts.

Treatment

• The anxiety characteristics of schizoaffective disorder are generally treated with anti-anxiety drug therapies (benzodiazepines such as Lorazepam and Clonazepam).

Considerations

• Schizoaffective disorder is often complicated by patient experiences of poverty, unemployment and homelessness (which can be exacerbated by the effects of co-morbid anxiety disorders) that necessitate occupational and social rehabilitation as part of a patient's treatment.