Schizoaffective disorder in homeless patients: A systematic review

Abstract

Background: Schizoaffective psychosis is a severe and chronic psychiatric disorder defined by the presence of mood symptoms, like mania and/or depression and schizophrenia, such as hallucinations and/or delusions. Aims: We aim to find out whether there is a correlation between schizoaffective psychosis and being homeless. Method: To do so, a literature search was carried out in the PubMed platform in April 2022, using the keywords ‘schizoaffective’ and ‘homeless’. Results: In this review, 28 articles from this search were included. Intrinsic characteristics, rates of psychiatric readmission, prediction of homelessness, medication noncompliance, and substance use were explored, as they were the main themes of the results. Conclusions: The homeless population suffers from great diagnostic variability and the diagnosis schizoaffective psychosis is still evolving contributing to such diagnostic and treatment difficulties. Their frequent visits to the healthcare services, especially emergency room leads to consequent interaction with multiple healthcare professionals, resulting in a myriad of diagnoses, with clinical remission and therapeutic goals not being attained. More studies are necessary for a better evaluation of this super difficult population.