For many years, medical experts have always classified bipolar disorder and schizophrenia as two distinct mental disorders. In fact, many psychiatrists still have the practice of separating bipolar disorder and schizophrenia even up to today.

However, to a person on the street, when you consider the symptoms of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, the distinctions are blurred and it is indeed very difficult to tell the differences from one another. Even psychiatrists often misdiagnose.

The diagnosis of bipolar disorder, like many other medical condition, involves systematically ruling out other conditions that can imitate it. There are certainly many conditions that can look a bit or a alot like bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder describes patterns of abnormal and servere mood swings, ranging from disabling depression to mania while schizophrenia covers a broad range of disorders that are a combination of psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and thought disorganization.

In both cases, patients can display the lack of apathy and motivation. There is even an illness known as schizoaffective disorder where the patient has mood swings episodes that fall under the diagnosis of bipolar disorder and symptoms of schizophrenia that persists after the mood episode is over.

A recent study has found the link between bipolar and schizophrenia. If schizophrenia has been running in a family, there is a high possibility that bipolar disorder will run in there too. This suggests that both disorders may be caused by the same genes.

This means that psychiatrists should not be viewing these disorders separately anymore. While bipolar schizophrenia may still exist as separate entities, it goes to show that it is still best to leave the diagnosis to the professionals.