Schizoaffective Disorder

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Medical Treatment for Schizoaffective Disorder

Basic Principles

Both drug and psychosocial therapies are necessary to successfully treat schizoaffective disorder. Because of the unemployment, poverty, and homelessness that often complicates schizoaffective disorder, drug therapy alone usually is insufficient. Drug therapy usually can stop the patient's psychosis, but often only social and occupational rehabilitation therapies can overcome the associated unemployment, poverty and homelessness. Recovering from schizoaffective disorder is an extremely lonely experience, and these patients require all the support that their families, friends, and communities can provide.

Schizoaffective disorder appears to be a combination of a thought disorder, mood disorder, and anxiety disorder. Thus the medical management of schizoaffective disorder often requires a combination of antipsychotic, antidepressant, and antianxiety medication. Unfortunately, after the first year of treatment, only a minority of schizoaffective outpatients remain on their oral medications. Thus long-acting, depot antipsychotic medications that last 2-4 weeks between injections (e.g., depot haloperidol, pipotiazine, or fluphenazine) usually are required to overcome this noncompliance problem.

Hospitalization

Treatment of an acutely psychotic patient often requires psychiatric hospitalization. The presence of adequate family or social supports will often shorten the length of this hospitalization, or permit the psychotic patient to be treated solely on an outpatient basis.

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