DID and schizoaffective?

Is it possible to have did in which the host is schizoaffective and the some of alters and fragments arent?

bumping this. i think that i may have both disorders. i am currently in the process of being diagnosed with either schizoaffective, schizophrenic, or bipolar with psychosis. I seem to fit the schizoaffective the best. i think that my main personality is schizoaffective and my some of my alters and fragments are not. i have not told my psychs about them yet. when im my main i am text book schizoaffective but when im an alter im not. i only have one alter that has a name. he is christian. he only comes out when i meet pretty girls for the first time and he is very cool and girls love him. When i catch it i am able to introduce him as myself. i've done it around my friends and they are like dude that's not your name. i just play it off like i was joking. Nobody can ever seem to figure me out. When i date girls they say "every time i think i have you figured out you change on me. You so unpredictable." I like a lot of different things and am good at different things depending on who is out. sometimes i'm into country and like off roading, other times i like rock and wanna break things, etc. my main scares me because i hear and see things with mood swings. while the others don't and usually have a distinct personality. i occasionally black out, loose track of time, and see myself out of my own body doing something. Is it possible to have DID with my main being schizoaffective? someone please help.

43 people have looked at this with no response :/

I don't have an answer, I'm afraid, but I'd like you to know that we've read over each post. You describe a few things I can relate to (we have no psychosis, but it was suggested), but it's still not our call to make.

There are some smart cookies on this board, and they might have some advice. Try taking the DIssociative Experiences Scale (it's free online), and talk about your symptoms with a professional.

-Jeff

I did take that and scored somewhere in the mid to high 40s

Well in any case I would no longer hide your suspicions from your therapists. DID often gets misdiagnosed as bipolar, schizophrenia and a number of other things. Lots of therapists don't really have experience with recognizing and treating DID, and if they would miss the DID dx and diagnose you with something else it could be dangerous or at the very least not helpful. Since they are diagnosing you it seems like the right time to point out additional symptoms. Disorders like schizophrenia also have symptoms like derealization and depersonalization etc so I couldn't tell you that what you're experiencing is DID but I know that it's important to mention everything you're experiencing to the therapists.

jeg57 wrote:i am currently in the process of being diagnosed with either schizoaffective, schizophrenic, or bipolar with psychosis. I seem to fit the schizoaffective the best.

If they do not explicitly include DID in the differential diagnosis, and know how to rule it out, then I would say they are not competent to diagnose you. Period. Ask for referral to a diagnostician who administers the SCID-D (not the SCID) or the MID.

Schizoaffective personality disorder is far less common than DID, and superficially it can look to an observing psychotherapist a lot like DID. This is a caricature thumbnail sketch but basically in SPD there is a facade personality and an underlying concealed authentic personality, and a relatively poor quality of communication between them causes a great deal of confusion and emotional pain.

Many persons with DID also have a facade personality, but it is only a thin veneer and beneath it the authentic personality is a complex system of fragmented and more or less dissociated identities, each of which has a normal quality of communication through the facade to the outside world.

Una+ wrote:Many persons with DID also have a facade personality, but it is only a thin veneer and beneath it the authentic personality is a complex system of fragmented and more or less dissociated identities, each of which has a normal quality of communication through the facade to the outside world.

This I experience differently (if I understand correctly), but my levels of communication do vary a lot.
I become non-verbal if for example nothingness becomes host.
She is very young and has no speech at all.
She came out to therapist few month ago, but I was not diagnosed then.
My alters have different level of communication and perception and nothingness has only sensory perception, as she is too young to have speech.
But I do not know, if I understand what you wrote correctly.

Gaah.

Okay, first, what I wrote about "schizoaffective personality disorder" applies to schizotypal personality disorder, not schizoaffective disorder. Schizoaffective disorder is one of a group of disorders that have psychosis as a defining feature.

Second, alizhee don't worry about this. What I was trying to describe about schizotypal personality disorder is nothing to do with having a preverbal or nonverbal alter such as you describe.

Going back to the original post: the doctors seem to be suspecting a psychosis of some kind. But what often happens, that make referring clinicians' diagnoses poor quality unless they use one of the high quality structured interviews to make the diagnosis, is that they mistake any kind of unusual belief or odd thinking as psychosis. Which it isn't. So, many people who openly report that they hear voices are mistakenly diagnosed as experiencing psychosis.

Una+ wrote:Second, alizhee don't worry about this. What I was trying to describe about schizotypal personality disorder is nothing to do with having a preverbal or nonverbal alter such as you describe.

ok, thank you for writing.