TITLE:
Symptom overlap between schizophrenia and bipolar mood disorder: Diagnostic issues
AUTHORS:
Vivek Bambole, Megan Johnston, Nilesh Shah, Sushma Sonavane, Avinash Desouza, Amresh Shrivastava
KEYWORDS:
Classification; Depressive Symptoms; Mania; Diagnosis
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Psychiatry,
Vol.3 No.4A,
October
29,
2013
ABSTRACT:
Although the Kraepelinian classification paradigm is
widely used, observations of overlapping boundaries among the symptoms
associated with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are beginning to challenge
this dichotomy. The objective of this
research was to explore the symptoms of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and with bipolar mood disorder in order
to determine the frequency of symptom
overlap. One hundred patients of a psychiatry ward were divided into two
main groups based on their diagnosis—schizophrenia or bipolar mood disorder.
Chi-square analyses were used to determine
whether the symptoms measured in this study differed between individuals
diagnosed with schizophrenia and those diagnosed with bipolar mood disorder.
The results suggest that both positive/manic
symptoms and negative/depressive symptoms are present in individuals
diagnosed with schizophrenia and with bipolar mood disorder and, consequently, they
do not present a reliable means of differentiating between these two groups.
These findings have many implications for
the ways in which mental illness is
conceptualized and classified. Treatment efforts and interventions may
be enhanced if a more dimensional approach to diagnosing mental illness is utilized.