Complete 6 pages APA formatted article: Classifying, Explaining and Treating Mental Illness. Instead, the term schizophrenia has been used in the classification. This is due to its continued use in most countries as well as the existing uncertainty concerning its nature and relationship to schizotypal and schizoid disorders.

Mental disorders and illnesses have for decades been identified to cause significant work and social problems (Mueser&Jeste, 2008). The major symptoms for schizophrenia include delusions, like paranoia, which entails hearing noises or voices that in essence do not exist. Other symptoms are. lack of emotion, impaired thinking and absence of motivation (Mueser&Jeste, 2008). German physician, Emile Kraepelin identified the disease in 1887 as a disguised and distinct mental illness. He named the disease ‘dementia praecox’ to isolate it from other types of dementia. In 1911, EugenBleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist renamed the disease as schizophrenia since Kraepellin’s one was misleading. it was not actually dementia (Mueser &Jeste, 2008). The disease has thus lived with humankind for over a century.

It is evident that extensive and strong clinical traditions occur. These traditions favour the retention of schizophrenia among other delusional disorders. It is applicable to this discussion. The discussion provides a set of change to the diagnosis of a schizoaffective category. At least one classically schizophrenic symptom needs to be present with the affective signs during the same episode of the disorder (Beck, 2004). Apparently, psychiatrists will remain disagreeing about the classification of mood disorders until methods of isolating the clinical syndromes are established. This will enable the psychiatrists to depend at least on either physiological or biochemical dimension, rather than being limited to clinical reports on emotions and behaviour.