5. Assessment - Classification Flashcards
What are the two main contemporary classification systems in psychiatry?
ICD 10 and DSM IV
What is an operationalised approach?
the use of precise clinical descriptions of disorders, together with predefined exclusion and inclusion criteria and details of the number and duration of symptoms required for diagnosis
What are characteristic symptoms?
symptoms pertinent to a diagnosis, such as the symptoms of depression
What are discriminating symptoms?
are necessary for diagnosis since they are not found in other disorders
What are pathognomonic symptoms?
symptoms which strongly favour one diagnosis over another and have high specificity for the diagnosis
What are inclusion and exclusion criteria?
a hierarchy of symptoms, arranged in order of importance, forming the core inclusion and exclusion criteria used to establish a diagnosis
What is the atheoretical approach?
diseases are described according to the observed phenomenology, not an understanding of what might be causing the disease
What is the descriptive approach?
classification of illness based on what constitutes the illness, rather than what causes it
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a categorical approach?
Easy to understand
Based on existing knowledge base
Easy communication
Poor validity - vague catagories
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a dimensional approach?
More valid given continnum of emotional and cognitive states Can indicate severity Comorbid diagnosis difficult Good for research Unclear clinical utility
What is hierarchical organisation?
certain disorders take precedence over others when making a diagnosis (Jasperian theory) - ICD 10 still uses this system with organic disorders at the top of the hierarchy
What is a multiaxial approach?
provides a holistic assessment of the individual in terms of their disorder and functioning
What multi-axial approach is used in ICD-10?
Axis 1: the mental disorder
Axis 2: the degree of disability
Axis 3: current psychosocial problems
What multi-axial approach is used in DSM-IV?
Axis 1: Clinical disorders
Axis 2: Personality Disorders/Mental retardation
Axis 3: General Medical Conditions
Axis 4: Psychosocial and Environmental problems
Axis 5: Global Assessment of Functioning
What assessment instruments have been developed using the ICD10?
Schedule for clinical assessment in neuropsychiatry (SCAN)
Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI)
International Personality Disorder Examination (IPDE)
What different versions of ICD 10 exist?
- Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Guidelines (CDDG)
- Diagnostic Criteria for Research (DCR)
- Primary Care version
- Clinical Coding Manual
What different syndromes of drug use does ICD-10 describe?
- Acute intoxication
- Harmful use
- Dependence
- Withdrawal state
- Withdrawal delirium
- Psychotic disorder
- Amnesic syndrome
- Late-onset disorders
What does ‘harmful use’ mean?
a pattern of substance misuse that is causing damage to the physical or mental health of an individual without any pattern of dependence
What does DSM-IV describe as substance ‘abuse’?
Maladaptive use:
despite problems in social, occupational, physical and psychological domains
in hazardous situations
at least one month, usually recurring over long period
no dependence signs
What are the ICD-10 criteria for alcohol dependence?
In the last 12 months, at least 3 of:
- Intense desire to drink alcohol
- Difficulty in controlling the onset, termination and level of drinking
- Experiencing withdrawal symptoms if alcohol is not taken
- Use of alcohol to relieve withdrawal symptoms
- Tolerance as evidenced by the need to escalate dose over time to achieve the same effect
- Salience - neglecting alternate forms of leisure or pleasure in life
- Narrowing personal repertoire of alcohol use
What are the DSM-IV criteria for alcohol dependence?
At least 3 of the following, lasting for at least 1 month:
- Consuming alcohol for longer period and in larger amounts than intended
- Unsuccessful attempts to cut down
- Experiencing withdrawal symptoms if alcohol is not taken
- Use of alcohol to relieve withdrawal symptoms
- Tolerance as evidenced by the need to escalate dose over time to achieve the same effect (at least 50% increase from the start)
- Salience - most time spent on pursuing alcohol directly or indirectly
- Failure in role obligations and physical health
- Giving up alternate pleasures
- Continued use despite knowing the harm caused
What are the Edwards and Gross criteria for dependence?
- Narrowed repertoire
- Salience of alcohol seeking behaviour
- Increased tolerance
- Repeated withdrawals
- Drinking to prevent or relieve withdrawals
- Subjective awareness of compulsion
- Reinstatement after abstinence
What is depressive pseudodementia?
a descriptive term, not a diagnosis, describing the presentation of depression as dementia clinically
What are the features of pseduodementia compared to dementia?
- Onset can be dated more precisely
- More rapid progression of symptoms
- High level of complaint of cognitive impairments
- No nocturnal increase in dysfunction
- Attention and concentration more well preserved
- ‘Don’t know’ answers are common in testing
- Memory loss for remote events more severe than recent ones
What are the diagnostic criteria for dementia?
- Global deterioration in intellectual capacity and disturbance in higher cortical functions like memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, language, learning abilities and judgement, an appreciable decline in intellectual functioning and some interference with personal activities of daily living
- Insidious onset with slow deterioration
- The absence of clinical evidence or findings from individual investigations suggestive of organic brain disease or other systemic abnormalities
- Absence of sudden onset or physical/neurological signs
What are the 5A’s associated with dementia?
- Amnesia - Impaired ability to learn new information and to recall previously learned information
- Aphasia - Problems with language (receptive and expressive)
- Agnosia - Failure of recognition, especially people
- Apraxia - Inability to carry out purposeful movements, even though, there is no sensory or motor impairment
- Associated disturbances - behavioural changes, delusions and hallucinations
What are the diagnostic criteria for vascular dementia?
- Presence of a dementia syndrome, defined by cognitive decline from a previously higher level of functioning and manifested by impairment of memory and two, or more, cognitive domains and deficits should be severe enough to interfere with ADLs, not due to the physical effects of stroke alone
- Onset may follow a cerebrovascular event and is more acute
- The course is usually step-wise, with periods of intervening stability
- Focal neurological signs and symptoms or neurological evidence of cerebrovascular disease judged aetiologically related to the disturbance (hemiparesis, lower facial weakness, Babinski sign, sensory deficit, hemianopia, dysarthria) or neurological imaging
- Emotional and personality changes are typically early, followed by cognitive deficits that are often fluctuating in severity
- Symptoms not occurring during the course of delirium
What are the diagnostic criteria for dementia with Lewy Bodies?
- Spontaneous motor features of Parkinsonism
- Fluctuating cognition with notable variation in attention and alertness
- Recurrent visual hallucination, which are typically well formed and detailed
- A progressive cognitive decline that is severe enough to interfere with normal social and occupational functioning and memory loss may not be an early feature, but it is usually evident with progression
- Supportive features: neuroleptic sensitivity and history of falls
What is Parkinson’s disease dementia?
Parkinsonian symptoms existed for 12 months before dementia developed
If cognitive and motor symptoms develop within the same 12 month period then a diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia is given
What are the diagnostic criteria for frontotemporal dementia?
- Insidious onsent and gradual progression
- Early loss of personal and social awareness
- Early emotional blunting, Early loss of insight
- Behavioural features: early signs of disinhibition, decline in personal hygiene and grooming, mental rigidity, inflexibility, hyperorality, stereotyped and perseverative behaviour
- Speech disorder: reduced output and signs such as stereotypy, echolalia and perseveration
- Affective symptoms: anxiety, depression and frequent mood changes, emotional indifference
- Physical signs: incontinence, primitive reflexes, akinesia, rigidity and tremor
What is schizophrenia?
a severe psychotic illness with onset in early childhood, characterised by bizarre delusions, auditory hallucinations, thought disorder, strange behaviour and progressive deteriorationin personal, domestic, social and occupational functioning, all occurring in clear consciouness
What are the most common symptoms in schizophrenia (International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia)?
- Lack of insight 97%
- Auditory hallucinations 74%
- Ideas of reference 70%
- Suspiciousness 66%
- Flatness of affect 66%
- Second person hallucinations 65%
- Delusional mood 64%
- Delusions of persecution 64%
- Thought alienation 52%
- Echo De Pensee, Gedankenlautwerden 50%
What are the Feighner/St Louis Criteria (Washington University Criteria)?
Early diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia 1972 Three parts (A, B, C) Must have all of A, one of B and 3 of C for a 'definite' diagnosis of schizophrenia
What are the part A criteria in the Feighner/St Louis criteria?
Both of the following are necessary;
- A chronic illness with at least 6 months of symptoms prior to the index evaluation without a return to the premorbid level of psychosocial adjustment
- The absence of a period of depressive or manic symptoms sufficient to qualify for affective disorder or probable affective disorder
What are part B criteria in the Feighner/St Louis criteria?
Must have at least 1 of the following:
- Delusions or hallucinations without significant perplexity or disorientation associated with them
- Verbal production that makes communication difficult because of a lack of logical or understandable organisation (muteness defers diagnosis)
What are the part C Feighner/St Louis criteria?
At least 3 of the following for a definite diagnosis and 2 for a possible diagnosis;
- Single
- Poor premorbid social adjustment or work history
- Family history of schizophrenia
- Absence of alcoholism or drug abuse within one year
- Onset prior to age 40
What are the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) Research and Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) for schizophrenia?
Made up of a polythetic symptom criterion, duration criterion and an exclusion criterion to define schizophrenia
What is the symptoms criterion in the NIMH RDC for schizophrenia?
Eight symptoms or groups of symptoms. The first seven symptoms are Schneiderian first-rank symptoms and other delusions or hallucinations, the last one gives diagnostic value to formal thought disorder if accompanied by either blunted or inappropriate affect, delusions or hallucinations of any type or grossly disorganised behaviour.
What are the duration criterion in the NIMH RDC for schizophrenia?
Signs of illness have lasted at least 2 weeks from the onset of a noticeable change in the subject’s usual condition
What are the exclusion criterion in the NIMH RDC for schizophrenia?
describes the differential diagnosis with affective disorders: at no time during the active period of illness being considered did the subject meet the full criteria for either probable or definite manic or depressive syndrome to such a degree that it was a prominent part of the illness
What are Schneider’s first rank symptoms?
- Auditory hallucinations
- Passivity experiences
- Thought withdrawal, insertion, broadcasting
- Delusional perception
How does ICD-10 view the duration of schizophrenia?
Not necessarily a long duration
Acute psychotic episodes 1 month diagnosis becomes schizophrenia
Prodromal features are not included in diagnosis
What are the ICD-10 subtypes of schizophrenia?
- Paranoid
- Hebephrenic
- Catatonic
- Residual
- Simple
- Undifferentiated
- ‘Chronic’ schizophrenia
What are the features of paranoid schizophrenia?
Most common subtype
onset later than other subtypes
prominent delusions and auditory hallucinations
less disorganisation, speech problems, flat or inappropriate affect and catatonic behaviour
What are the features of hebephrenic/disorganised schizophrenia?
Onset 15-25 years
Poor prognosis
Disorganised speech or behaviour
Marked thought disorder - severe loosening of associations, emotional disturbances described by inappropriate affect, blunted affect or senseless giggling, abnormal mannerisms like mirror gazing
Marked impairment of social and occupational functioning - poor self-care, poor hygiene, extreme social behaviour and disorganised behaviour
Less catatonic behaviour
What are the features of catatonic schizophrenia?
Common in developing nations Acute onset with episodic course and complete symptom remission Prominent motoric immobility, excessive motor activity, extreme negativism or mutism, posturing, stereotypy, mannerisms, grimacing, echolalia, echopraxia Oneiroid (dream-like) state can occur 3 clinical forms: 1. excited catatonia 2. stuporous catatonia 3. alternating catatonia
What are the features of residual schizophrenia?
Previous ‘full-blown’ acute episode in the past - at least 1 year ago
current negative symptoms or attenuated forms of 2 or more generic symptoms (ie odd beliefs instead of delusions, unusual perceptual experienced instead of fully formed hallucinations)
Absent delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech/behaviour, catatonia
What are the features of simple schizophrenia?
Early onset
Duration criteria is 1 year
Insidious development of negative symptoms without evidence of positive symptoms
Personality is gradually deteriorating with increasing emotional bluntness
May have brief psychotic episodes
Poor prognosis
What are the features of undifferentiated schizophrenia?
Generic symptoms but not falling into other catagories
What are the features of ‘chronic’ schizophrenia?
Persistent disability for two years or longer - a descriptive term only, not a subtype
What is ‘post-schizophrenic’ depression?
some schizophrenic symptoms present, but not dominating the clinical picture
most recent episode of relapse
What are the ICD-10 symptom classification for schizophrenia?
At least 1 of: 1. Thought echo, thought insertion/withdrawal/broadcast 2. Passivity, delusional perception 3. Third person auditory hallucination, running commentary 4. Persistent bizarre delusions OR 2 more of: 1. Persistent hallucinations 2. Thought disorder 3. Catatonic behaviour 4. Negative symptoms 5. Significant behaviour change
What are the DSM IV symptom classification for schizophrenia?
At least 1 of: 1. Bizarre delusions 2. Third persons auditory hallucinations 3. Running commentary OR 2 more of: 1. Delusions 2. Hallucinations 3. Disorganised speech 4. Grossly disorganised behaviour 5. Negative symptoms
What is the ICD-10 ‘acute and transient psychotic disorders’?
Onset within 2 weeks (acute)
Onset within 48 hours (abrupt)
Recovery within 2-3 months
Can be either polymorphic psychosis or schizophrenia-like
What is schizotypal disorder?
eccentric manners, social withdrawal, magical thinking, suspiciousness and obsessive ruminations without resistance
2 year history of symptoms
no previous diagnosis of schizophrenia
a cluster A personality disorder in DSM-IV
common in first degree relatives of those with schizophrenia
What is persistent delusional disorder?
characterised by persistent, often life long, ‘non-bizarre’ delusion or a set of related delusions arising insidiously in mid-life or later
daily functioning not impaired
other schizophrenic symptoms rarely occur
present for at least 3 months (1 month DSM)
What is erotomania (de Clerambault syndrome)?
erotic conviction that a person with a higher status is secretly in love with the patient
Erotic conviction that a person with a higher status is secretly in love with the patient. What disorder is this?
Erotomania (de Clerambault syndrome)
What is the delusional disorder of grandiosity?
belief that person fills some special role, have some special relationship, or possess some special abilities
What is Othello syndrome?
delusional jealousy - characterised by a delusion of infidelity, with patients possessing the fixed belief that their spouse or partner has been unfaithful
What are persecutory delusions?
belief that others are attempting to hurt or harm them, leading them to obtain legal recourse and sometimes turning violent