Psychosis and schizophrenia – what is the difference?
The physician divides psychiatric illnesses into several categories, for example into neuroses (e.g. obsessive-compulsive disorder) and psychoses (e.g. schizophrenia). These terms have a rather unspecific meaning in common parlance and are often used synonymously or in the wrong context.
A schizophrenia is therefore a clinical picture, the psychosis only its umbrella term, the schizophrenia is thus one of many psychoses. The classification and nomenclature of psychiatric diseases is very complex and many of the medically neutral terms are popularly loaded with prejudices, so that patients often feel “crazy” with their diagnosis.In addition, the terms that are known to the general population are often too imprecise. Many physicians therefore tend to use the term schizophrenic psychosis rather than schizophrenia and further categorize the clinical picture according to its subtype in order to describe the individual appearance as accurately as possible and not to discriminate against the patient.
Schizophrenia and depression – what is the connection?
As described above, untreated schizophrenia leads to massive psychological and physical attrition in the long term. In many cases, the resulting symptoms fulfill all the criteria of depression. However, the schizophrenic symptoms are often difficult to distinguish from those of depression, and the negative symptoms are similar in both disorders.
Therefore, a high number of unreported depressions among schizophrenic patients is suspected, and exact figures on the frequency of depressions vary depending on the study. It is often diagnosed as post-schizophrenic depression after an acute episode, which can last longer than a normal depression and is associated with a high risk of suicide. It is therefore important to differentiate between schizophrenia and depression, as the treatment varies and the patient should be helped as soon as possible. If treatment is given early, the prognosis for post-schizophrenic depression is good, and most patients recover from it, although only after many months or a few years.
Schizophrenia and autism – what is the connection?
Until 1980, autism was considered a subform of schizophrenia, a kind of childhood variant of the disease. Today we know that these are separate clinical pictures, which differ not only in the age of the patients. However, both diseases are very variable and some forms are very similar.
There are also patients who show characteristics of both diseases. Whether in such cases two diagnoses have to be made or whether there are possibly mixed forms of autism and schizophrenia is not yet clear.
