paranoid disorder vs schizophrenia

[1lydia]

Can paranoid personality disorder develop into paranoid schizophrenia?A person from my family went undiagnosed for many years despite strange behavior, only when she had a psychotic episode did she allow us to take her to a doctor and was diagnosed with paranoid disorder. The symptoms fit her "usual" symptoms (i.e. those she's had for years) - relatively coherent delusions of being disliked, plotted against, of her flat being bugged, someone stealing things when she's out. However, I saw her during the psychotic episode she had and her thinking was not coherent then, I couldn't follow it, she started with saying someone at her work was plotting to have her fired, then said they wanted to frame her into embezzlement, I asked how, she said she had told them to repair a pipe and someone came to fix it and took, say, 1000 dollars for it, and she signed it and now she''ll be in trouble, she'll go to prison, then she said the whole market where she works has been flooded today and they will set her up for it, when I asked how it was possible to blame her if she hadn't been there for the last 3 days she couldn't answer. She spent 5 days at home not even dressing up, in total mess. I tried to calm her but after I left she called me and started saying again they wanted to put her in jail and that her landlady is also involved in conspiracy. Then she called my boyfriend and told him I was also involved. She told her landlady the people at her work were trying to poison her. When her son came she suddenly got better and when they took her to the doctor she  only said she felt depressed and tired. But I remember her in that state, I remember I was terrified with the sight and what she was saying, it was clear to me at once that these are symptoms of mental illness. Is it possible that she has had paranoid disorder for long, but now it has developed into schizophrenia? Now she's taking pills she's her usual self - distrustful and ill-functioning but no acute symptoms.

[Roger Gould, M.D.]

I strongly recommend that you try not to get lost in the jungle of the jargon of our profession.  the person you described had a  paranoid psychotic episode, and is now in remission, with a paranoid personality.  You don't have to invoke the schizophrenic idea to fit the facts of this case.....

[Jaquta]

Personality by its nature is long-standing.  It is entirely possible, even likely, that your family member has had this disorder for some time.  

I expect that if she had schizophrenia her psychiatrist would have picked that up.
I don't know if the two illnesses exist on the same continuum -I don't think so.  I think schizophrenia is Axis I and PPD is Axis II.

J
I don't know what the probability of having the two disorders together is.

[1lydia]

Thanks for the explanation. I guess I confused paranoid syndrome with paranoid personality. The doctor said she had paranoid syndrome. From what I'm now reading it may mean that she has the symptoms that may occur in paranoid schizophrenia, but may also occur e.g. under extreme stress or due to physical problems, so he does not know for sure yet. She's only visited him 3 times so far. I've also read that some doctors avoid pronouncing the word schizophrenia so as not to scare (or antagonize) patients and/or families, but concentrate on speaking about symptoms and treating them. In this case it would be justified because when he first prescribed her the pills she read the leaflet and said she wouldn't take them because they are for schizophrenia. She is very determined not to accept she has anything but depression, though her symptoms are completely different.