Key Terms Flashcards
Schizophrenia
A severe mental disorder where people loose contact with reality and insight are impaired e.g psychosis
Classification of mental disorder
The process of organising symptoms into categories based on which symptoms frequently cluster together
Positive symptoms of schizophrenia
Atypical symptoms experienced IN ADDITION to normal experiences. They include hallucinations and delusions
Hallucinations
Sensory experiences that have either no basis in reality or are distorted perceptions of things that are there
Delusions
Involve beliefs that have no basis in reality e.g a person believes that they are someone else or that they are the victim of a conspiracy
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia
Loss of usual abilities and experiences
Speech poverty
Reduced frequency and quality of speech
Avolition
Loss of motivation to carry put tasks and results in lowered activity levels
Co-morbidity
Occurrence of two disorders or conditions together e.g a person has both schizophrenia and a personality disorder. Where two conditions are frequently diagnosed together it calls into the question the validity of classifying the two disorders separately
Symptom overlap
Two or more conditions share symptoms.
Genetics
Genes consist of DNA strands. DNA produces ‘instructions’ for general physical features of an organism (such as eye colour, height) and also specific physical features (neurotransmitters and size of brain structures). These may impact on psychological features
Neural correlates
Patterns of structure or activity in the brain that occur in conjunction with an experience and may be implicated in the origins of that experience
Dopamine
A neurotransmitter that generally has an excitatory effect and is linked to the sensation of pleasure. Unusually high levels are associated with schizophrenia and unusually low levels are associated with Parkinson’s disease
Family dysfunction
Refers to processes within a family such as poor family communication, cold parenting and high levels of expressed emotion. These may be risk factors for both the development and maintenance of schizophrenia
Cognitive explanations
Explanations that focus on mental processes such as thinking, language and attention
Dysfunctional thought processing
Information processing that does not represent reality accurately and produces undesirable consequences
Antipsychotics
Drugs used to reduce the intensity of symptoms, of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia
Typical antipsychotics
The first generation of drugs for schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, been used since the 1950s.
They work as dopamine antagonists and include chlorpromazine
Atypical antipsychotics
Drugs for schizophrenia developed after typical antipsychotics. They typically target a range of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin.
E.g clozapine and risperidone
Cognitive behaviour therapy
A methods for treating mental disorder based on both cognitive and behavioural techniques.
From the cognitive viewpoint the therapy aims to deal with thinking, such as challenging negative thoughts. The therapy includes behaviour al techniques
Family therapy
A psychological therapy carried out with all or some members of a family with the aim of improving the communications within the family and reducing the stress of living as a family
Token economies
A form of behavioural modification, where desirable behaviours are encouraged by the use of selective reinforcement
E.g people are given ‘tokens’ when they engage in socially desirable behaviours. The tokens are secondary reinforcers and can then be exchanged for primary reinforcers - food of privileges
Interactionist approach
Suggests that the development of schizophrenia is due to the combined effects and interaction of biological and psychological factors
Diathesis stress model
A psychological concept that a disorder is due to the interaction between predisposed vulnerability (Diathesis) and an environmental trigger later in life (trigger)
