Classification Flashcards
How many people suffer from schizophrenia worldwide?
%; 50% of all mentally ill patients
What is catatonic schizophrenia?
The most severe and permanent form of the illness that can include stupor (not moving for long periods of time)
What characterises type I schizophrenia?
Acute with positive symptoms
What characterises type II schizophrenia?
Chronic with negative symptoms
What are positive symptoms of schizophrenia? Name three positive symptoms of schizophrenia
The acquisition of abnormal behaviours.
Delusions, paranoia and hallucinations
Define hallucination
The perception of something being real that does not truly exist (false sensations)
Define delusion
A false belief that is resistant to confrontation with the truth (false beliefs)
Do positive symptoms of schizophrenia respond well to medication? Do symptoms occur in short or long episodes?
Yes; short
What are negative symptoms of schizophrenia?
Behaviours displaying disruption of typical emotions and actions - a loss of normal functioning. Chronic, longer-lasting episodes that are resistant to medication such as flat-effect, speech poverty and avolition
What is necessary for a diagnosis of schizophrenia?
The presence of two or more symptoms for more than one month
What is chronic onset schizophrenia?
Sufferers become increasingly disturbed through gradual withdrawal over a prolonged period of time
What is acute onset schizophrenia?
Symptoms appear suddenly after a stressful incident
What are the three symptoms of schizophrenia developed by Schneider?
Passivity experiences and thought disorders, auditory hallucinations and primary delusions
What are the four symptoms of schizophrenia added by Slater and Roth?
Thought-process disorders, disturbance of effect, psychomotor disturbances and avolition
Define passivity experiences and thought disorders
Thoughts and actions are perceived as being under external control. Sufferers may believe that their thoughts are being inserted, withdrawn or broadcasted to others
Define auditory hallucinations
Experiencing voices, often insulting, inside their head that form running commentaries or discuss the sufferer’s behaviour, anticipate their thoughts or repeat their thoughts out loud
Define primary delusions
These are usually of grandeur or believing they are somebody important e.g. Jesus reborn. Later these become delusions of persecution, where sufferers believe someone is trying to harm them
Define thought process disorders
Sufferers wander off the point, invent new words and phrases, muddle their words, interpret language literally and indulge in speech poverty (excessively brief replies to questions with minimal elaboration)
Define disturbances of effect
Sufferers appear uncaring or as having innapropriate emotional responses, often reacting to bad news with laughter etc. and having severe and sudden mood swings
Define psychomotor disturbances
Adopt frozen statue-like poses, exhibit tics, twitches and repetitive behaviour such as pacing
Define avolition
Displaying an inability to make decisions, having no enthusiasm or energy, losing interest in personal hygiene, sociability and affection
What are the three most common primary delusions?
Grandiose, persecutory and somatic
Define test-retest reliability in relation to schizophrenia
When a clinician makes the same diagnosis on separate occasions from the same information
Define inter-rater reliability in relation to schizophrenia?
When different clinicians make the same diagnosis independent of each other for the same person
What did Soderberg and Beck find?
There was an 81% concordance rate of clinicians using the DSM classification system; a 54% concordance rate
Describe predictive validity in relation to schizophrenia
If diagnosis leads to effective treatment diagnosis is seen as valid
Describe descriptive validity in relation to schizophrenia
Patients with schizophrenia should differ from patients with other disorders
Describe aetiological validity in relation to schizophrenia
All schizophrenics should have the same cause for the disorder
Whose key piece of research demonstrates the lack of validity in the diagnosis of schizophrenia?
Rosenhan
What is co-morbidity?
When one or more additional disorder or diseases occur simultaneously with schizophrenia
What issue does co-morbidity raise and why?
Descriptive validity; having simultaneous disorders suggests that schizophrenia may not be a separate disorder
What did Buckley find?
29% of sufferers have PTSD, 50% have depression and 23% have OCD alongside schizophrenia
What did Jeste et al. find?
Schizophrenics with co-morbid conditions are excluded from research but they form the majority of schizophrenia patients, meaning that research findings lack population validity and cannot be generalised to most sufferers
What is culture bias?
The tendancy to over-diagnose members of other cultures as suffering from schizophrenia
What did Cochrane find?
Those of Afro-Caribbean origin are seven times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia in Britain despite the incidence of schizophrenia being the same in the West Indies as Britain (1%)
What did Fernando discuss?
People from ethnic minorities experience greater levels of racism and poverty than white people which causes higher incidences of schizophrenia as a stressor can trigger schizophrenic symptoms
What is the gender bias in relation to schizophrenia?
Clinicians (the majority of whom are men) have misapplied diagnostic criteria to women, and recent studies suggest that there may be up to 50% more male sufferers
Who suffers more from negative symptoms and substance abuse?
Men
Who have better recovery rates and lower relapse rates?
Women
When are the ages of onset for men?
18 and 25
When are the ages of onset for women?
23-35
When are the peak ages for schizophrenia onset in men?
21 and 39
When are the peak ages for schizophrenia onset in women?
22, 37 and 62
What did Lewin et al. find?
When clearer diagnostic criteria was applied the number of female sufferers became much lower
What other disorders does schizophrenia have an overlap with?
Bipolar, depression, cocaine consumption and autism
What does Wray et al. report?
Schizophrenia and bipolar share variations at four chromosomal sites and the heritability overlap is 15%
Type I schizophrenia and bipolar are both mediated by…
Excesses of dopamine signalling
Type II schizophrenia and depressive episodes are both…
Regulated by serotonin
What did Ketter find?
Misdiagnosis due to symptom overlap can lead to years of delay in receiving treatment and in the meantime suffering and further degeneration can occur as well as high levels of suicide
Is the DSM idiographic or nomothetic?
Nomothetic
What is considered a better predictor of mental illness than the DSM?
Medical history
What is the aetiological phallacy?
Assuming a cause of a disorder because a treatment worked
