Descriptive Psychopathology Flashcards
Which is the more pervasive emotional state; mood or affect?
Mood
What is valence?
The quality of affect e.g. happy, depressed
What is emotional incontinence?
Extreme form of labile affect.
No control over emotions
In which diseases do you see emotional incontinence?
Pseudo-bulbar palsy
Frontal lobe damage
Name the mixed states as per Kraepelin
Manic stupor Mania with poverty of thought Inhibited mania Depressive mania Excited depression Depression with flight of ideas
What are the current two terms used to describe mixed states now?
Dysphoric mania
Depressive mixed state
What is dysphoric mania?
Predominant mania with some depressive symptoms
What is depressive mixed state?
Full depression with some manic symptoms
Character of non-organic manic
Constant, unremitting, difficult to describe quality.
Where is non-organic pain most common?
Head and neck
Back
Which type of pain is most common in somatisation disorder?
MSK
Which type of symptom is most common in hypochondriasis?
GI
Who coined the term Anhedonia?
Ribot
In which disease is anhedonia a core symptom?
Melancholic depression with somatic syndrome
What type of anhedonia is more common in schizophrenia?
Social/interpersonal
Who first described the term alexithymia?
Sifneos
What is alexithymia?
Difficulties in using words to express emotions
What is alexithymia often accompanied by?
Diminution of fantasy
Reduced symbolic thinking
Literal thinking concerned with details
Difficulties in recognizing ones own feelings
Difficulties in differentiating body sensations and emotional states
Robot-like existence
In which disorders is alexithymia seen?
Psychosomatic Somatoform disorders Depression PTSD PDs Paraphilias
How is time tested objectively in studies?
Trail making Test
Which types of patients have slowed TMT?
Manic and depressed
What is age disorientiation
Patients claim they are more or less than 5 years off their actual age
Who is age disorientation most common in
Chronic schizophrenia (particularly institutionalized)
What is the most common age disorientation in chronic schizophrenia?
Understate their age
Characteristics of age-disorientated patients
Older
Longer current admission
Young at first admission
Early onset and poor prognosis
What does perception consist of?
Receiving information from a sensory modality (bottom up)
Interpretation of processing of sensation instantaneously using cognitive faculties (top down)
What modalities of perception are there?
Visual Auditory Tactile Gustatory Olfactory Kinaesthetic Proprioceptive
What happens in perceptual distortions?
Stimulus and object perceived but objects quality altered
What happens in illusions?
Stimulus present but not perceived, rather a different object is perceived
What happens in hallucinations?
Perception without stimulus
What happens in negative hallucinations?
Stimulus present but no object is perceived
In which states is hyperacusis seen in?
Migraine
Alcohol hangover
What is dysmegalopsia?
Changes in shape of objects - especially loss of symmetry
What are accommodation errors
Ocular - paraylised accommodation can cause micropsia
What is imagery?
Images produced voluntarily with complete insight that they are mental and not external
What is eidetic imagery?
Visual images are drawn from memory accurately at will and described as if being perceived currently
What % of children have eidetic memory?
2-15%
Types of illusions?
Affect
Pareidolic
Complete
What leads to an affect illusion?
Prevailing emotional state leads to miscperceptions
Quality of affect illusion?
Often fearful, emotion provoking
Effect of concentration on affect illusion?
Disappears
What is a pareidolic illusion?
Formed objects from ambiguous stimuili coloured by prevailing emotion.
Quality of pareidolic illusion
Playful/whimsical
Effect of concentration on pareidolic illusion?
Object intensifies
What is a complete illusion?
Stimulus that does not form a complete object may be perceived as complete
What is complete illusion a result of?
Inattention
Effect of concentration on a complete object?
Disappears
What is pareidolia?
Where fantasy and imagery play equal parts apart from the actual sense perception
Some voluntary control.
Whatis pareidolia common in?
Delirium - particularly in children when febrile
Hallucinogen
Types of pseudohallucinations
Involuntary
Recognised to be self-originating
What are involuntary pseudohallucinations?
These occur in inner subjective space with vivid outline that are different from normal perception
In what way are pseudo-hallucinations similar to hallucinations?
Clear outline Vivid Retained for a long time Cannot be dismissed at will Behaviourally and emotionally relevant
Important qualities of hallucinations to identify them from other mental phenomena?
Occur at same time as other sensory perceptions
Take place in same space as other perceptions
Experienced as sensations
It has all qualities of an object
Involuntary and independent
What are elementary hallucinations?
Unstructured
When are elementary hallucinations seen?
In acute organic states
What are phonemes?
Any auditory hallucinations that occur as human voices
What is the verbal transformation effect?
When schizophrenics hear different words that have no phonetic connection to original repeated word
What are auditory hallucinations in alcohol-use like?
Initially fragmented voices, later clear voices
Organic causes of visual hallucinations
Occipital lobe tumours Post-concessional states Epileptic twilight state Hepatic failure (toxic delirium) Dementia
What can cause elementary visual hallucinations?
Solvent sniffing
Hallucinogens
What was black patch psychosis after cataract surgery a result of?
Anticholinergic eye drops
In whom does Charles Bonnet syndrome occur?
Elderly patients with normal consciousness and no brain pathology with reduced visual acuity due to ocular problems
What happens in Charles Bonnet syndrome?
Patients experience vivid, well-coloured, formed hallucinations which can be voluntary controlled and move
What are the most common visual hallucinations in Charles Bonnet?
Humans
Animals
Cartoons
Insight in Charles Bonnet?
Preserved
How can one make visual hallucinations in Charles Bonnet disappear?
Closing ones eyes
What percentage of Charles Bonnet hallucinations are elementary visual?
33%
What are autoscopic hallucinations?
Visual experience of seeing oneself
Gender ratio of autoscopic hallucinations?
Males 2:1
What is autooscopic hallucinations common with?
Impaired consciousness
Parietal lesions
Most common psychiatric disorder linked to autoscopic hallucinations?
Depression
Another name for Autoscopic hallucinatinos?
Phantom mirror images
What is palinopsia?
Visual disturbance that causes images to persist after stimulus has left
Which drug is palinopsia common with?
LSD
Which diseases is palinopsia common with?
Migraine
Occipital epilepsy
Head trauma
Difference between after image and palinopsia
In palinopsia colour inversion is absent
In afterimage, shadows or distorted colours are often noted
What can somatic hallucinations be divided into?
Superficial
Visceral
Kinaesthetic
What can superficial somatic hallucinations be divided into?
Tactile - touch
Hygric - wetness
Thermic - heat
Describe visceral hallucinations
Pain-like sensations arising from deep viscera like liver
What do visceral hallucinations suggest in terms of disease?
Schizophrenia
What is another name for visceral hallucinations?
Coenesthetic hallucinations
What are kinaesthetic hallucinations?
Refer to joint or muscle sense and often linked to bizarre somatic delusions
Which drug use are kinaesthetic hallucinations seen in?
Benzo withdrawl
Alcohol intoxication
What is formication?
Type of tactile hallucination - unpleasant sensation of little animals or insects crawling under the skin
When is formication seen?
Delirium tremens
Cocaine intoxication
In which organic state are tactile hallucinations seen in?
Parietal seizures
What is phantom limb in terms of classification?
Body image disturbance with a neurological basis
Not a hallucination
In which disorders do extracampine hallucinations occur in
Schizophrenia
Epilepsy
Hypnagogic
Which is more common: hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations?
Hypnagogic
What % of adults have hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations?
37%
Which type of hallucination is more specific for narcolepsy?
Hypnopompic
What does EEG show during hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations?
Alpha rhythm
Most common type of hypnagogic hallucination?
Hearing ones own name
What is a functional hallucination?
An external stimulus provokes hallucination and both are in same modality but individually perceived
What are reflex hallucinations?
Hallucinations in one modality provoked reflexively by a stimulus in another modality
Who first reported synaesthesia?
Francis Galton in 1880
Gender ratio of synaesthesia?
Females 4:1 to 6:1
Runs in families
What is the most common type of synaesthesia?
Colour-number
What is thought to be the cause of colour-number synaesthesia?
Extensive cross wiring between multimodal association regions, probably due to failed selective pruning
Which drug can induce synaesthesia?
Mescaline
In what type of people is delusional ideation more likely to persist?
Never married Older Schizophrenia Delusions of thought broadcasting Those with higher degree of preoccupation Higher behaviour relevance More than one primary delusion
Who noted the dimensions of delusional experiences?
Kendler - 1983
What are the dimensions of delusions?
Conviction Extension Disorganization Bizareness Pressure Acting on delusion Seeking evidence Lack of insight
What is conviction?
The extent to which a patient believes in a delusion
What is extension?
The extent to which a delusional belief extends to various spheres of life
What is disorganization in delusion?
The degree of internal consistency and systematisation of the belief
How is bizarreness defined?
Physical or logical impossibility
Overall implausibility or incomprehensibility with lack of grounding in ordinary experience
What is pressure of delusion?
Extent to which the patient is preoccupied and distressed
How are primary delusions defined?
Jaspers concept or
As the first psychopathology to occur in the course of symptoms
What is Jaspers concept of primary delusions?
They are the true, un-understandable beliefs that arrive fully formed and cannot be reduced further to any other mental experience.
What are the types of primary delusions?
Autochthonous
Delusional perception
Delusional mood/atmosphere
Delusional memory
What is an autochthonous delusion?
Ideas that occur out of the blue, take form in an stant without identifiable preceding events.
What is a delusional perception?
Normally perceived object is given a new meaning, usually self-referential - the conclusion being unwarranted.
Which type of primary delusion is included in Schneider’s first rank symptoms?
Delusional perception
What is delusional mood/atmosphere?
Sense of perplexity and uncertainty that exists during a prodrome of psychosis, usually ending in an autochthonous delusion which will make sense of the perplexity.
What psychiatric phenomenon directly precedes and is causally related to primary autochthonous delusions?
Delusional mood
What is a retrospective delusion?
Something that never happened and is irrational and bizarre is reported.
Sometimes a normal memory may be delusionally elaborated.
Advantages and disadvantages of primary delusions
Diagnostic relevance
No prognostic significance
Which organic state can cause primary delusions?
Epileptic psychosis
Which type of schizophrenia are primary delusions often seen in?
Acute
What are secondary delusions?
Those that follow a primary delusion or other mental phenomena such as hallucinations or affective disturbances
Which type of delusions are persecutory?
Secondary
What is a paranoid delusion?
One which is self-referential
What is a monothematic delusion?
Ones which occur as single delusions
What is Capgras delusion?
Believing someone close to you has been replaced by a double
What is Cotard delusion?
Severe depression with nihilistic and hypochrondriacal delusions tinged with grandiosity and a negative attitude.
Believing you are dead
What is Fregoli delusion?
People you know being swapped for imposters
What is mirrored-self misidentification?
Seeing one self in the mirror and not recognising it as you self - seeing it as a stranger
What is De Clerambault’s delusion?
Erotomania
What is Othello syndrome?
Pathological jealousy - believing someone close to you is having an affair
Who first used the term Morbid Jealousy?
Ey
Who is De Clerambault’s syndrome common in?
Women who believe an older man is in love with them
What is Old maid’s insanity?
De Clerambault’s syndrome where persecutory beliefs also coexist
What diseases is Cotard’s syndrome seen in?
Schizophrenia Depressive psychosis Elderly Migraine Organic lesions
Who described monosymptomatic hypochondriacal psychosis?
Munro
What does monosymptomatic hypochondriacal psychosis consist of?
Delusions of body odour and halitosis
Delusional infestation
Dysmorphic delusions
What is another name of delusional infestation?
Ekbom’s syndrome
What is the matchbox sign described in monosymptomatic hypochrondriacal psychosis?
Old lady comes to clinic with a match box of skin scrapings as evidence for the parasite causing her to itch.
Who first reported Capgras syndrome?
Kahlbaum in 1866
What is main cause of Capgras delusion?
> 50% due to organic brain damage
What is thought to underlie Capgras delusion?
Cognitively mediated by reduced affective responsivity to familiar faces and impaired belief evaluation
Disconnection of face recognition system of brain from autonomic nervous system plus damage to specific region of right frontal lobe
When was Fregoli syndrome first described?
Courbon and Fail in 1927
Essential feature of Fregoli?
No belief in actual physical change; instead patient believes that their percecutors can invade the body of others.
More rare than Capgras
What is syndrome of subjective doubles?
Patient believes another person has been physically transformed into their own self and is the exact double of themselves
What is intermetamorphosis?
Where people keep transforming their physical and psychological identities.
What is paraprosopia?
When a face appears to transform within seconds into a grotesque mask
Who described the term overvalued idea?
Wernicke
What is an overvalued idea?
Solitary abnormal beliefs that are neither delusional nor obsessional in nature but which dominates a persons life and actions.
Poor prognosis.
What diseases are overvalued ideas linked to?
Paranoid or anankastic PD Body Dysmorphphobia Anorexia Morbid jealousy Transsexualism
What is folie a deux?
Shared delusion between a psychotic person and someone close to them
What is doppelganger?
Awareness of onesef being both inside and outself oneself.
What type of disturbance is doppelganger?
Cognitive and ideational disturbance
Not always due to mental illness
What are the proposed causes of delusions?
Attentional bias
Attributional bias
Probabilistic reasoning bias
Menalising bias
Describe attentional bias
People with persecutory delusions preferentially attend to threat-related stimuli and preferentially recall threatening episodes
What is attributional bias
Patients excessively attribute hypothetical positive events to internal causes and negative events to external causes.
How does attributional bias affect paranoid patients?
They specifically attribute negative self-referent events active malevolence on part of another person (external) rather than circumstances or change
This might serve to preserve their self-esteem
How does attributional bias affect a patients delusions?
It can shape the content but not the form
Describe probabilistic reasoning bias
Reduced accuracy of judgement
Overconfident about their judgement
What is the mentalising deficit/bias?
Persecutory delusions reflect false beliefs about the intentions and behaviours of others that could arise from the theory of mind deficits
Importance for first rank symptoms in current classifications
One first rank symptom is symptomatically sufficient for a diagnosis of schizophrenia but they are not essential
Are first rank symptoms specific to schizophrenia?
No
Advantages for first rank symptoms
Clearly identifiable
Frequently occurring
Occur more often in schizophrenia than any other disorder
What is the underlying feature of all first rank symptoms?
Disturbance of self-image
Prevalence of FRS in patients with affective disorders?
22-29%
Prevalence of FRS in schizophrenia?
25-88%
Most frequent FRS?
Delusional perception
What are the FRS?
3 hallucinations
3 made phenomena
3 thought phenomena
2 isolated symptoms
What are the hallucinations in FRS>
Audible thoughts - thought echo
Voices arguing - 3rd person
Running commentary
What are the three ‘made’ phenomena in FRS?
Made affect - someone controlling mood
Made volition - someone controlling action
Made impulse - someone controlling the desire to act
What are the three thought phenomena in FRS?
Thought withdrawl
Thought insertion
Thought broadcast
What are the isolated symptoms in FRS?
Delusional perception
Somatic passivity
Are command hallucinations FRS?
No
Are somatic hallucinations FRS?
No
What did Schneider describe as second rank symptoms?
Mood changes
Emotional blunting
Perplexity
Sudden delusional ideas