co-morbidity & symptom overlap

• What is co-morbidity in mental disorders?

  Occurrence of two disorders together
• Why does co-morbidity question the validity of classifying disorders?

  Because two conditions are frequently diagnosed together
• Buckley et al. (2009) concluded that 50% of patients with diagnosis of schizophrenia also have a diagnosis of depression and 47% of patients with diagnosis of schizophrenia also suffer from substance abuse
• Examples of symptom overlap occurring with both schizophrenia & bipolar disorder:

  • Positive symptoms like delusions
  • Negative symptoms like avolition
• It is quite common for a client to have two possible diagnoses for a periods of moths before the picture becomes clearer to a clinician
• Comorbidity is when 2 or more separate conditions occur at the same time