How is schizoaffective disorder different from bipolar disorder 1?

More symptoms: For a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, one needs to have symptoms consistent with schizophrenia at one point as well as bipolar disorder at a different point in the same episode of illness. This can be tough to sort out unless you are seeing the same physician throughout the whole time.

Schizoaffective: Schizoaffective disorder is an extremely serious illness that can be thought of as a combination of schizophrenic (psychosis) and bipolar disorder (the old term being manic depression) with involves extreme mood swings.