Volume 40 · Number 2
FEBRUARY 2010
Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder:No Dichotomy, A Continuum, or One Disease?
By C. Ray Lake, MD, PhD
This issue, and an upcoming issue, of Psychiatric Annals address the idea that the “Kraepelinian dichotomy” may be obsolete. This is truly of field-altering effect because the concept that schizophrenia and bipolar disorders are separate and distinct illnesses has been a cornerstone of psychiatric diagnosis for almost a century. This concept has been accepted by academic psychiatry, the mental health professions, physicians in general, the public, and the media and is presented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition-text revision (DSM-IV-TR), the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), and major textbooks in psychiatry. The validity of schizophrenia as separate from psychotic bipolar disorder was established before chronicity and psychosis were recognized as consistent with severe disorders of mood. That schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are more alike than different is no longer a question among some researchers, as represented by several of the authors in these issues of Psychiatric Annals However, the idea of “no dichotomy” remains a minority opinion.
Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder: No Dichotomy, a Continuum, or One Disease?
C. Ray Lake, MD, PhD
The Psychotic Continuum: Follow the Evidence, but How is it Interpreted?
Jan Fawcett, MD
The Validity of Schizophrenia vs. Bipolar Disorder
C. Ray Lake, MD, PhD
Molecular Genetics and the Kraepelinian Dichotomy: One Disorder, Two Disorders, or Do We Need to Start Thinking Afresh?
Nick Craddock, MA, MD, MmedSci, PhD, FRCPsych;
Michael J. Owen
Psychotic Depression or Schizophrenia
Conrad M. Swartz, PhD, MD
Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective are Psychotic Mood Disorders
Daniel J. Aires, MD, JD;
Nathaniel G. Hurwitz, MD
Overlaps between Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder
Robert M. Post, MD
The Continuum of Psychosis — 1986-2010
Timothy J. Crow, MBBS, PhD, FRCP, FRCPsych, FMedSci
