Lecture 3 - Psychosis Flashcards
What is psychosis?
A loss of “shared” sense of reality
What is schizophrenia?
split mind, real and imagined - associated with additional symptoms
What are the main features of psychosis?
Loss of awareness of socially perceived (shared) reality due to:
- Schizophrenia
- Drug misuse
- Severe depression
- Bipolar
- Neurological injury
- Post-partum psychosis
What are the main features of schizophrenia?
- Delusional beliefs
- Hallucinations
- Withdrawal state
What are delusional beliefs?
A belief that can be seen as a misinterpretation of reality
- Persecutory (feel you are being targeted in some way)
- grandeur (your superiority)
- reference (objects and events you see are connected in some way or another)
- misidentification
- paranoia (being followed and spied on)
What are hallucinations?
- Can be any modality (sensory)
- Auditory can be most common, including simple sounds, voices directed at the individual or commentary about others
- Hallucinations may be quite frightening
What is the withdrawal state?
Avolition - loss of energy and absence of interest in routine activities
What are the two symptom groups of schizophrenia?
Positive and negative symptoms
What are positive symptoms + three examples?
Excess in cognition
- hearing voices
- delusions
- disorganised speech
What are negative symptoms + examples?
Deficits in behaviour
- Avolition
- Alogia - poverty of speech
- Anhedonia
- Flat affect
What is the prevalence of schizophrenia?
1 in 222 people among adults (WHO, 2022)
What are the genetic predispositions of sz accoridng to twin studies?
Twin studies, Gottesmann & Shields (1972)
- Monozygotic twins 42%; Dizygotic 9%
- Negative symptoms more genetically linked than positive
What are the genetic predispositions of sz according to adoptee studies?
Heston (1966)
- Greater risk for schizophrenia in those with diagnosed schizophrenic birth mothers – even though raised in another family/environment
What hormone is related to sz?
Dopamine
- Symptoms may be triggered by chemical “imbalances”
- Schizophrenia excess dopamine activity
- Symptoms lessen in response to psychotropic meds - dopamine antagonists
How to drugs predispose you to sz?
“Estimates of the proportion of cases of first onset of psychosis which could be prevented if no one smoked cannabis have ranged from 8% to 24% in different countries.”
Murray et al, 2017
What psychological stresses may predispose you to sz?
- Social factors
- Stressull life events
- Family environment and onset
- Expressed emotion
What is expressed emotion?
“Expressed emotion is largely reactive to deterioration manifested by the young person developing a psychotic disorder, rather than a trait of family members.” (McFarlane & Cook, 2007)
What are most effective interventions in treating sz?
Family interventions, psychoeducation, and CBT effectively reduce relapse risk in schizophrenia.
What is cognitive therapy?
- Self monitoring for use of medication
- investigates content of beliefs and source of voices and checks the evidence for them
