schizo-affective disorder in my life

There are other psychiatric disorders often confused with BPD and patients need to be aware of these others in the diagnostic dialogue with their doctor. Differential diagnoses to be considered include: ADHD, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder; recurrent major depressive disorder and schizo-affective disorder. I have had all of these disorders except schizophrenia at one time or another in the last seven decades. Some were officially diagnosed by a psychiatrist and some were not. In one study of 60 patients with BPD, 23 (38%) fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for at least one personality disorder. Those personality disorders most commonly were: narcissistic, borderline, antisocial, avoidance disorder and obsessive-compulsive. In my case the obsessive-compulsive personality disorder(OCPD) has been the most dominant and especially after the age of 60.
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Lithium was the first really successful mood stabilizer used by doctors beginning in the 1970s to treat MD. In the 1980s and 1990s MD came to be called BPD. This medication cushioned the effects of extreme depression and hypomania and prevented their effects from striking at my life. The perils of BPD lie in what I did in the midst of: (a) hypomanic episodes to deal with: decreased need for sleep, decreased self-control, irritability and risk-taking behaviours-1964,1966 and 1967; (b) schizo-affective or psychotic states, the 1968 and 1979-80 episodes; and (c) depression periods with their moroseness, extreme melancholia and suicidal wishes-1963, 1968 and 1978.

My history to that point, to 1980, had been far from smooth and linear as my remarks above indicate. Those thirty-six years had often been bisected, polarised and traumatised. As I indicated above I have written a more detailed account of these years elsewhere but this outline, this brief sketch here, of particular episodes and the periods between episodes will suffice. My experience of these highly diverse emotional and psychological swings of mood in everyday experience away form the norm, from my norm, is only part of my story. But it is a crucial part. Everyone has their story for everyone experiences all sorts of abnormal eccentricities and health problems in life, some people of course more than others and some more traumatic and intense than others.
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I don’t think I will ever know enough about the early years in my life before the age of 18, anyway, to assess whether my short periods of behavioural disorientation were examples of: (a) a mild-mania, hypomania, (b) BPD, (c) an affective disorder of some kind like schizo-affective disorder or (d) just a mild form of OCD. The very validity of the diagnosis of BPD in paediatrics and in adolescent studies is now in question.
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These behaviours, this depression and this euphoria, at the age of 19 or any of my behaviour before that last year of my teenage life(1963-1964), did not result in my receiving any medical attention. The first formal diagnosis of my illness was labelled a schizo-affective disorder(SAD) in 1968. SAD is a sort of hybrid condition that exists in between BPD and schizophrenia, although this distinction may be somewhat artificial. It may be inappropriate to have a discrete cut between the two disorders when both may represent part of a spectrum and symptoms of both disorders were part of my experience during the last half of 1968. This situation involved the possibility of a serious risk of harm to myself or others and required in July 1968 what is termed involuntary commitment to hospital. This case involved a severe BPD episode with dangerous-violent and aggressive behaviour as well as depressive episodes in August 1968 with suicidal ideation.
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