5.1.3 schizophrenia Flashcards
what is disorganised schizophrenia
Disorganised (hebephrenic) Type Must have all; disorganised speech, disorganised behaviour, flat or inappropriate affect and does not meet the criteria for Catatonic Type.
what is catatonic sz
Catatonic
Immobility or stupor excessive motor
activity that is apparently purposeless, extreme negativity, strange voluntary movement as evidenced by posturing, stereotyped movements, prominent mannerisms, or prominent grimacing.
what is paranoid sz
Paranoid Type
Preoccupation with one or more delusions or frequent auditory
hallucinations, No disorganised speech, disorganised or catatonic behaviour, or flat or inappropriate affect,
what is undifferentiated sz
Undifferentiated Type
Variation between symptoms, not.
fitting into a particular type
what is residual sz
Residual Type Absence of prominent delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech, and grossly disorganised or catatonic behaviour, A presence of negative symptoms
features of schizophrenia
About a quarter of people who have had a schizophrenic episode recover and do not get another one. And a quarter of those who have schizophrenia have it continually without any breaks. That leaves 50% who have periods of recovery and periods of symptoms. The positive symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, can be overcome the negative symptoms tend to remain.
A feature of schizophrenia is that there is psychosis, which refers to a separation from reality, unlike neurosis, where there are mental health issues but no separation from reality.
Another feature is that schizophrenia is a serious mental health condition with about 1% of the population experiencing it. The average life expectancy for someone with schizophrenia is around 10 or more years less of the average and this might be because of the physical health problems associated with schizophrenia or the highest suicide rate. E.g. duerr 2013 suggests that adolescence with psychotic symptoms are nearly 70 times more likely to attempt suicide.
Schizophrenia tends to be diagnosed during adolescence and up to the age of about 30.
People who are experiencing social problems, such as poverty and unemployment as well as possibly homelessness, more likely to develop schizophrenia than any other sections of the population
explanation of symptoms of sz
schizophrenia is a mental illness that can affect the way someone thinks, speaks or feels to such a degree that they lose their grip on reality. There are a number of ways of characterising schizophrenia, including giving first and second rank symptoms or positive and negative symptoms.
First rank symptoms include hearing voices and ideas about being guided by others. Second rank symptoms include flattened emotions.
according to the DSM-IV-TR, A diagnosis of schizophrenia requires 1 - 6 months of positive and negative symptoms.
In schizophrenia, positive symptoms are where there are additions to behaviour and symptoms that can be seen and noted i.e. the presence of something.
Negative symptoms are the absence of something, usually the absence of normal functioning
positive symptoms of sz
positive symptoms are additions to behaviour and actual symptoms that can be noted, such as delusions and
hallucinations.: refers to seeing or hearing things that are not there, but may also involve smells or feelings of being touched by someone or something. Hearing voices in some cultures is not seen as a side of a mental disorder, but other personal spiritual capability. In these cases the voices are often kind and positive, rise and other diagnosed with schizophrenia, the voices are often harsh and critical.
delusions AKA false beliefs: refers to a person thinking their movements are being controlled by someone else. A common form of delusion is the paranoid delusion, where the sufferer believes that someone is trying to mislead, manipulate or even kill them. Someone suffering from delusions of grandeur will think they are in prominent position of power, such as a king, or that they possess special powers, such as to cure cancer.
Thought insertion is when a person believes their thoughts do not belong to them and have been implanted by an external source. They experience a blurring of the boundary between yourself and others and feel that this border has become permeable. This can lead to the belief that thoughts, feelings and experiences can pass from one person to another
disordered thinking is inferred from a persons speech which may be characterised by derailment having a series of unrelated ideas, or tangentiality going off on a completely different topic. The person may switch from one topic to another and jumble seemingly unrelated ideas, making it difficult to follow the train of thought. Word salad refers to apparently random and incoherent stringing together of words while the term neologism refers to blending words together to create new words. Mixing up one’s words can be quite common and therefore this is only classed as symptomatic if it leads to dysfunctional Communication
basic eval of positive symptoms
positive symptoms tend to have greater weight when diagnosing schizophrenia but as explained previously, they can be affected by cultural differences so perhaps should not be weighted as strongly as negative symptoms, which might be more objectively measured
negative symptoms of sz
Negative symptoms are where normal functioning is not present, such as a loss of emotion, speech or motivation.
Such symptoms often start before positive ones, sometimes years before schizophrenia is diagnosed. this is known as the prodromal Period.
Some examples of negative symptoms are :
lack of energy and apathy e.g. no motivation to do daily chores, social withdrawal e.g. avoiding family and friends and not going out, flatness of emotions, not looking after their appearance, lack of pleasure and every day things in every day life, speaking little even when required to interact.
People with negative symptoms need help because they tend to neglect every day tasks such as preparing food or personal hygiene tasks.
eval of negative symptoms
negative symptoms seem less affected by cultural factors and it has been suggested that they can be more objectively measured. Hearing voices, for example, it’s difficult if not impossible to measure. Lack of energy, flatness of emotions or social withdrawal might be more easily monitored. However, prodromal features have been found to be present in many adolescence and cannot be taken to indicate the onset of schizophrenia on their own
prevalence of sz
It affects around 1 in every 100 people over the course of their life.
It affects men and women equally and seems to be more common in city areas and in some ethnic minority groups. It is rare before the age of 15, but can start at any time after this, most often between the ages of 15 to 35.
A key feature of schizophrenia is the lifetime prevalence which is 0.3 to 0. 7%. this varies with ethnicity, nationality and geographic origin in immigrants. Onset is slightly earlier in males early to mid 20s their females late 20s.
Males tend to have a poorer prognosis than females and females are over represented in late onset cases 40+.
Prognosis is variable and hard to predict.
A minority recover completely, most experience chronic, episodic impairment and some show progressive deterioration, with increasingly brief periods of remission and severe cognitive deficits.
Positive symptoms reduce overtime but debilitating negative symptoms of the remain
one biological explanation of sz : neurotransmitters as an explanation :
explain the dopamine hypothesis
the dopamine hypothesis is that sz is caused by excessive dopamine activity
this causes abnormal functioning of dopamine activity - dependent brain systems. resulting in sz symptoms. dopamine activity can increase / decrease brain activity depending on the system you’re looking at
dopamine hypothesis : what evidence is there for the hypothesis
The dopamine hypothesis states that the brain of sz patients produces more dopamine than normal brains
evidence comes from
studies with drugs
post mortems
pet scans
dopamine hypothesis
Which two dopamine pathways are there and how are they relevant to schizophrenia symptoms
Mesolimbic pathway is responsible for positive symptoms and the meso cortical pathway is responsible for negative symptoms
dopamine hypothesis : Explain the dopamine differences
Development of dopamine in one area can prevent development in other areas.
For a sample lack of activity in the prefrontal cortex and limbic system may lead to the lack of inhibition of their production in striatum in other words it releases more dopamine in the straighten
people with schizophrenia have enlarged ventricles and smaller frontal lobes.
Higher incidence of head injury in childhood.
All these features link with the prefrontal cortex, which stops developing in adolescence which is usually the onset of schizophrenia in males