Psychosis Flashcards
What is psychosis?
Psychosis is a collective name given to an extensive range of disparate symptoms, and the presence of different combinations of these symptoms may lead to a diagnosis of any one of a number of schizophrenia spectrum disorders
What are the core features of psychosis?
DSM-5 lists five important characteristics for diagnosis schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Four characteristics are known as positive symptoms (reflecting an excess or distortion in normal function). These include:
- Hallucinations
- Delusions
- Thought disorder
- Abnormal motor behaviour
The last one reflects negative symptoms. The negative symptom refer to a loss or dimunition of normal functions. These include:
- Diminished emotional expression
- Avolition
- Alogia
- Anheodina
- Asociality
what are hallucinations?
A sensory experience in which a person can see, hear, smell, taste or feel something that isn’t there.
The most common are auditory hallucinations that are reported around 70% of sufferers (Cleghorn et al 1992)
What are delusions?
They are firmly held but erroneous beliefs that:
1.Usually involve a misinterpretation of perceptions or experiences and
2.Become fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting or contradictory evidence.
Such delusions are commonly experienced by 75% of individuals hospitalized because of their psychotic symptoms (Maher, 2001)
What are the main types of delusions?
There are 6 main types of delusions found in those experience psychosis these are:
- Persecutory delusions (Paranoia)
- Grandiose delusions
- Delusion of control
- Delusions of reference
- Nihilistic delusions
- Erotomanic delusions
What is thought disorder?
Disorders of thought, or thought disorder is described by Davey (2014) as patterns of disorganised thinking, usually associated with loose associations.**
What are the features of thought disorder/ how does it manifest in speech?
The most common features of thought disorder are derailment or loose associations.
In speech this manifests as:
- Speech is not relevant - tangible speech (i.e not relevant)
- Speech is not structured/ abnormally structures -
- Speech is incomprehensible/ hard to understand -***
what are the negative sypmtoms of psychosis?
- Diminished emotional expression - A reduction in facial expressions of emotion, lack of eye contact, poor voice intonations and lack of head and hand movements that would normally give rise to emotional expression
- Affective flattening
- Avolition -
- Alogia
- Anhedonia
- Asociality
What is a reality monitoring deficit?
have difficulty identifying the source of perception and difficulty distinguishing whether it is real or imagined
what is a self-monitoring deficit?
they cannot distinguish between the thoughts that they have generated themselves and the thoughts other people have generated.
How is schozphrenic speech similar to normal speech?
Fromkin (1975) responded that except for the disruption of discourse which can be attributed to non-linguistic factors, all the features of schizophrenic language are prevalent in normal speech as exemplified by speech errors and “slips of the tongue”. Mistaken lexical choices and minor scramblings of syntax are common in everyday speech. Indeed, speech errors are often triggered by the sounds or senses of recently uttered words, and speakers are commonly unaware of their fumbles (Fromkin (1973); Meringer and Mayer (1895); Freud (1904/1965)). Disorders of content in speech (e.g poor content, derailment, loose association), as is typical in psychosis, can be similar to children’s imaginary talk or speech when somebody is distracted or tired.
How are hallucinations and delusions similar to normal experinces?
Some symptoms of psychosis can be similar to certain everyday experiences. Hallucinations and delusions of psychosis can be similar to everyday experiences when we sleep, during extreme fatigue, after bereavement, when distracted, during childhood (imagination during play), when intoxicated, post anesthetic or briefly during certain illness like migraines and fevers.
how is schizophrenic speech diffrent from everyday speech?
Normal speakers make occasional errors like those seen in schizophrenia, but not whole strings of errors. Uncorrected speech errors of such length and unintelligibility do not occur in normal speech. What’s more, normal speakers, when an error is pointed out, immediately correct it; speakers with schizophrenia do not.
How are hallucinations and delusions different from normal experiences?
schizophrenic patients can be distinguished from that of control subjects in ways that do not meet the criteria for a delusion, particularly in terms of the conviction, consistency,and strength with which such beliefs are expressed. The content of schizophrenic speech has been described as deviant in the use of conventional social norms , the degree to which personal themes have an inappropriate impact , and in how subjects think about or judge events in the real world).(kuperberg,2003)
what are the arguments against clinical intervention with psychosis?
Some believe they should not engage or encourage individuals to talk about their symptoms as this can create “collusion” with their non reality.
