16: Psychological Disorders - Schizophrenia Flashcards
Schizophrenia
A psychotic disorder that involves severe disturbances in thinking, speech, perception, emotion, and behaviour. Literally means “split mind”.
Characteristics of Schizophrenia
Diagnosis
Diagnosis requires that a person misinterprets reality and exhibits disordered attention, thought, and perception
Characteristics of Schizophrenia
- Delusions – false beliefs that are sustained in the face of evidence that normally would be sufficient to destroy them
- Hallucinations – false perceptions that have a compelling sense of reality
- Emotions can be affected in several ways:
- Some have blunted affect, manifesting less emotion that others
- Some have flat affect, showing almost no emotion at all
- Some have inappropriate affect, expressing a wrong emotion to a situation
Subtypes of Schizophrenia
Paranoid type
people believe that others mean to harm them, and delusions of grandeur, in which they believe they are enormously important
Subtypes of Schizophrenia
Disorganized type
central features are confusion and incoherence, together with severe deterioration of adaptive behaviour
Subtypes of Schizophrenia
Catatonic type
shows striking motor disturbances, ranging from muscular rigidity to random or repetitive movements
Subtypes of Schizophrenia
Undifferentiated Type
exhibit some symptoms and thought disorders of other categories, but not enough to be diagnosed in a category
Subtypes of Schizophrenia
Two main categories on basis of two classes of symptoms:
Type I schizophrenia
predominance of positive symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, and disordered speech)
- Called positive because they represent pathological extremes of normal processes
Subtypes of Schizophrenia
Two main categories on basis of two classes of symptoms:
Type II Schizophrenia
predominance of negative symptoms (lack of emotional expression, loss of motivation, and absence of normal speech)
Causal Factors in Schizophrenia
Biological Factors
Genetic Preposition
Strong evidence for a genetic predisposition, though specific genes are still unknown
Causal Factors in Schizophrenia
Biological Factors
Brain Abnormalities
Can be caused by destruction of neural tissue
- Mild to moderate brain atrophy often observed
Causal Factors in Schizophrenia
Biological Factors
Biochemical Factors
Dopamine hypothesis – symptoms of schizophrenia are produced by overactivity of dopamine system in areas that regulate emotional responses, motivated behaviour, and cognitive functioning
Causal Factors in Schizophrenia
Psychological Factors
Freud believed that schizophrenia represented an extreme example of defense mechanism regression
Causal Factors in Schizophrenia
Environmental Factors
Hospitalized schizophrenics are more likely to relapse if they return to a home environment that is high in a factor called expressed emotion (high levels of criticism, hostility, and overinvolvement)
Causal Factors in Schizophrenia
Sociocultural Factors
- Social causation hypothesis attributes higher prevalence of schizophrenia to higher levels of stress that low income people experience
- Social drift hypothesis proposes that as people develop schizophrenia, their personal and occupational functioning deteriorates, so they drift down the socio-economic ladder into poverty
- Prevalence is not different throughout cultures, though chance of recovery is greater in developed countries
