Psychosis Tutorial Flashcards
What is psychosis?
broad descriptive term for difficulty interpreting and perceiving reality
What are the different symptom domains in psychosis?
- Positive symptoms
- Negative symptoms
- Disorganisation
What is the prevalence of psychotic disorders?
- prevalence ~3.5%, of which ~1% is schizophrenia
- Schizophrenia has taken a lot of focus both in terms of research and cultural perception of psychosis but this is changing
What is a hallucination?
Percepts in absence of a stimulus
What are positive hallucination symptoms?
- Auditory
- Voices commenting on you
- Voices talking to each other
- Visual
- Somatic/tactile
- Olfactory (rare)
What are delusions?
Fixed, false beliefs, out of keeping with social/cultural background
What are positive delusion symptoms?
- Persecutory
- Control
- Reference
- Mind reading
- Grandiosity
- Religious
- Guilt/sin
- Somatic
- Thought broadcasting
- Thought insertion
- Thought withdrawal
What are positive symptoms?
- Hallucinations
- Delusions
What are negative symptoms?
- Alogia
- Avolition/apathy
- Anhedonia/asociality
- Affective flattening
What are disorganisation symptoms?
- Bizarre behaviour
- Thought disorder
What is alogia?
-Poverty of speech
•Paucity of speech, little content
•Slow to respond
What is avolition/apathy?
- Poor self-care
- Lack of persistence at work/education
- Lack of motivation
What is anhedonia/asociality?
- Few close friends
- Few hobbies/interests
- Impaired social functioning
What is affective flattening?
- Unchanging facial expressions
- Few expressive gestures
- Poor eye contact
- Lack of vocal intonations
- Inappropriate affect
What is bizarre behaviour?
- Bizarre social behaviour
- Bizarre clothing/appearance
- Aggression/agitation
- Repetitive/sterotyped behaviours
What is thought disorder?
- Derailment
- Circumstantial speech
- Pressured speech
- Distractibility
- Incoherent/illogical speech
What is the onset of psychosis like?
- Can occur at any age
- Peak incidence in adolescence/early 20s
- Peak later in women
What is the course of psychosis like?
- Often chronic & episodic
* Very variable
What is morbidity of psychosis like?
- Substantial, both from disorder itself and increased risk of common health problems e.g. heart disease
- Significant impact on education, employment and functioning
What is the mortality of psychosis like?
- Substantial
- All-cause mortality 2.5x higher, ~15 years life expectancy lost
- High risk of suicide in schizophrenia – 28% of excess mortality
What is the psychiatric history?
- History of Presenting Concern
- Past Psychiatric History
- Background History (Family, Personal, Social)
- Past Medical History and Medicines
- Corroborative History
- The patient’s description of the presenting problem – nature, severity, onset, course, worsening factors, treatment received
- Circumstances leading to arrival to hospital
What would you ask for past psychiatric history?
- Any known diagnosis?
- Any treatment?
- Known to a community team?
- Any previous admissions to hospital?
What would you ask for family history?
- Age of parents, siblings, relationship with them
- Atmosphere at home
- Mental disorder in the family, abuse, alcohol/drugs misuse, suicide
What would you ask for personal history?
- Mother’s pregnancy and birth
- Early development, separation, childhood illness
- Educational and occupational history
- Intimate relationships
What would you ask for social history?
- Living arrangements
- Financial issues
- Alcohol and illicit drug use
- Forensic History
What would you ask for past medical history and medicines?
Medical problems = a cause or consequence of
mental disorder or psychiatric treatment
•Regular medications?
•Compliance?
•Over the counter medications?
•Interactions?
What is a corroborative history?
-Need for consent
•Informants: relatives, friends, authority
•Confidentiality
What is in a mental state examination (MSE)?
- Appearance and Behaviour
- Speech
- Mood
- Thoughts
- Perceptions
- Cognition
- Insight
What are you looking for in appearance and behaviour?
- General appearance
- Facial expression
- Posture
- Movements
- Social behaviour
What are you looking for in general appearance?
- neglect: alcoholism, drug addiction, dementia, depression, schizophrenia
- weight loss: anorexia nervosa, depression, cancer, hyperthyroidism, financial issues/homelessness