Mental Disorders Confused as Schizophrenia

I will only mention a few that I knew that I was confused on while researching.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

    Schizotypal personality disorder defined by DSM-5 as a pattern of acute discomfort in close relationships, cognitive or perceptual distortions, and peculiar behavior. Though schizotypal and schizophrenia have some symptoms like delusions of reference, odd thinking/speech, paranoid thoughts, and flat affect. There are fundamental differences that a person has schizotypal personality disorder is social isolation and not being able to primary interpersonal relationships due to social anxiety. People with schizotypal personality disorder are aware of their distorted ideas and reality (Kvarnstrom, 2018).

Schizoid Personality Disorder

    A schizoid personality disorder is a pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of emotional expression (American Psychiatric Association, 2017). It is similar to schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder by flattened affect and unable to connect socially. Unlike schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder, people with schizoid due not experience hallucinations or paranoia and do not have bizarre thoughts/speech. Symptoms display during early adulthood and differentiate from psychotic disorders by the detachment from social relationships and restricted range of emotional expressions in interpersonal settings (American Psychiatric Association, 2017). 

Schizoaffective and Schizophreniform Disorder

There are many similarities between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, such as having delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized thinking, behavior, and speech. Schizoaffective disorder is a combination of positive and negative symptoms and symptoms of schizophrenia. It has symptoms of mood disorder such as depression and mania (Preda, 2019). There are two types of schizoaffective disorder: bipolar and depressive. Schizophreniform disorder is identical to schizophrenia, but the length of the symptoms lasts between one to six months. If it goes longer than six months, then the diagnosis of schizophrenia can be made. Another essential symptom is the lack of impaired social and occupational functioning(American Psychiatric Association, 2017).