[Personality profile in bipolar schizoaffective psychoses. A comparison with bipolar affective psychoses]

The aim of this study was to investigate personality profiles in patients with bipolar affective and schizoaffective disorder, classified according to ICD-9 criteria using objective psychological tests (Personal Research Form, Objective Analytical Test Battery, IPC-Query Form). The bipolar schizoaffective patients were further subtyped according to Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) into schizoaffective-affective and schizoaffective-schizophrenic patients. 81 patients took part in the study (29 bipolar affective and 52 bipolar schizoaffective patients; the latter were subtyped into 23 schizoaffective-schizophrenic and 29 schizoaffective-affective patients). We showed that the personality profiles are quite similar in schizoaffective-affective and schizoaffective-schizophrenic patients if compared to purely affective patients. But indeed there are pronounced differences between the schizoaffective-affective and the schizoaffective-schizophrenic subtypes, so that subtyping schizoaffective disorder like done in Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) seems to show that schizoaffective disorders are not a homogenous group.