Chapter 7 - Psychotic disorders Flashcards
Positive symptoms
In schizophrenia, hallucinations, delusions, and disorganisation in thought and behaviour.
Thought disorder
State of highly disorganised thinking (also known as formal thought disorder of a loosening of associations) characteristic of individuals with schizophrenia.
Motor disturbance
Disturbance of bodily movement.
Negative symptoms
In schizophrenia, deficits in functioning such as affective flattening, alogia and avolition.
Avolition
Inability to initiate or persist with important activities; negative symptom of schizophrenia.
Affective flattening
Severe reduction or complete absence of affective (emotional) responses to the environment; negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
Alogia
Deficiency in the quantity of speech; negative symptom of schizophrenia.
Hallucination
Psychotic symptom entailing perceptual experiences that are not real, which can occur in any sensory modality (e.g., the false perception of sound or sight).
Auditory hallucination
Perception of a sound that is not real (such as hearing a voice when alone).
Hallucinogens
Substances including LSD and MDMA (i.e., ‘ecstasy’) that can produce perceptual distortions and illusions.
Delusion
Psychotic symptom entailing a strongly held belief that is not consistent with what almost everyone else believes and despite obvious proof to the contrary.
Paranoid delusion
False belief of delusional intensity that someone is seeking to harm the individual or his/her interests.
Delusion of reference
False belief strongly held by an individual that environmental stimuli have a particular significance for him/her.
Somatic delusion
False belief of delusional intensity regarding the appearance or functioning of one’s body.
Grandiose delusion
False belief of delusional intensity about the self including ideas of inflated worth, power, knowledge, ability, identity or relationships with well-known figures.
Catatonic behaviour
Marked motor abnormalities such as adopting unusual postures or engaging in repetitive movements.
Depression
State marked by a sad mood and/or loss of interest in one’s usual activities, as well as feelings of hopelessness, suicidal ideation, psychomotor agitation or retardation, appetite and sleep disturbances, fatigue, poor concentration and a sense of worthlessness.
Antipsychotic medications
Drugs used to treat psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations.
Cannabis
Substance that can produce feelings of wellbeing, perceptual distortions and paranoid thinking.
Paranoia
State characterised by false beliefs that one is being harassed persecuted or unfairly treated, which may reach delusional intensity.
Schizophrenia
Psychotic disorder characterised by two or more of the following; delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech, grossly disorganised or catatonic behaviour, and negative symptoms.
Prodromal symptoms
In schizophrenia, milder symptoms prior to an acute phase of the disorder during which behaviours are unusual but not yet psychotic.
Expressed emotions (EE)
Family interaction style in which family members are overly protective and self-sacrificing towards the person with a psychological disorder while also expressing high levels of criticism and hostility; this may contribute to the person’s relapse.
Adoption study
Study of the heritability of a disorder by finding adopted people with a disorder and then determining the prevalence of the disorder among their biological and adoptive relatives in order to separate contributing genetic factors from environmental factors.
