Differences Between Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder (1)

Professor James Watson explains that although bipolar disorder and schizophrenia share some symptoms, they have a different impact on lifestyle.

The bipolar disease has many similarities to schizophrenia, and distinguishing whether someone is bipolar or schizophrenic is hard. But there’s a real mood variance in bipolar disease – you go sometimes very high or sometimes very low, long periods of depression. But the people are much higher functioning. So, when they are over their manic phase, they can have jobs and take care of themselves. The awful thing about schizophrenia is the inability to take care of yourself. So, schizophrenics can be hospitalized, and then when they are not in the hospital and still taking medicine, they virtually have to be in a group home, they cannot be independent. A bipolar person will just go back to his job. But if you see someone who is in extreme psychosis, you couldn’t predict whether he was going to be finally diagnosed schizophrenic or bipolar, and you would use the same anti-psychotic medicine to get him out of total psychosis.