Symptoms of schizoaffective disorder

With schizoaffective disorder you will experience some symptoms of depression, mania and psychosis.

Depression

You may experience:

• Low or negative mood
• Feeling tired, slowed down with less energy
• Feeling hopeless, guilty, worthless
• Uninterested in things you usually like doing
• Difficulty sleeping
• Feeling more or less hungry than usual, possibly resulting in weight change
• Thoughts of death or suicide

Mania

You may experience the following if you have mania:

• Feeling positive even when things aren’t going well for you
• Feeling overly active, energetic or restless
• Talking very quickly, jumping from one idea to another and struggling to focus on one topic
• Racing thoughts
• Not needing much sleep
• Being more irritable, argumentative or aggressive than usual
• Being more social than usual
• Doing things you wouldn’t normally do such as spending lots of money, using drugs, being promiscuous or gambling

Schizophrenic symptoms

Schizophrenia is a mental illness which affects the way you think. Symptoms can have an effect on how to cope with daily life. These include:

• Hallucinations – Seeing, hearing and feeling things that aren’t there
• Delusions – Believing things that aren’t true
• Disorganised speech – Talking quickly or slowly, jumping between topics and not making sense to other
• Disorganised behaviour – You may have inappropriate behaviours, such as laughing when people tell you sad news
• Catatonic behaviour – You may feel unable to move or feel in a daze
• Finding it difficult to think straight