Schizophrenia 1 Flashcards
What is schizophrenia?
Affects 1% of the population. Has high monetary cost - exceeds the costs of all cancers. The major symptoms of schizophrenia are universal - across cultures. Three categories of symptoms: positive, negative, and cognitive.
What are symptoms of schizophrenia?
Appear gradually, over a period of 3-5 years. Negative symptoms are the first to emerge, followed by cognitive symptoms. The positive symptoms follow several years later. Negative symptoms can appear in early childhood. Later on can correlate them with the onset of schizophrenia.
What are positive symptoms?
Make themselves known by their presence (excess). They include thought disorder, hallucinations, and delusions.
What is thought disorder?
Disorganised, irrational thinking – probably the most important symptom of schizophrenia. Schizophrenics have great difficulty arranging their thoughts logically and sorting out plausible conclusions from absurd ones. During conversation they jump from one topic to another as new associations come up. Sometimes, they utter meaningless words or choose words for rhyme rather than for meaning.
What are delusions?
Beliefs that are contrary to fact. There are many types: Of persecution - false beliefs that others are plotting and conspiring against oneself. Of grandeur - false beliefs about one’s power and importance (godlike powers, special knowledge that no one else possesses). Of control are related to persecution i.e the person believes that he or she is being controlled by others through radar or a tiny radio receiver implanted in his or her brain.
What are hallucinations?
Perceptions of stimuli that are not actually present. Most common are auditory, but they can also involve any of the other senses. Typically, notices talk to the person telling them to do something, scolding the person for his/her unworthiness, or meaningless phrases. Olfactory hallucinations are also fairly common, and they often contribute to the delusion that others are trying to kill them.
What are negative symptoms?
Known by the absence of normal behaviours. Includes flattened emotional response, poverty of speech, lack of initiative and persistence, anhedonia (without pleasure of experiences), and social withdrawal.
What are cognitive symptoms?
Cognitive symptoms include: Difficulty in sustaining attention, low psychomotor speed (the ability to rapidly and fluently perform movements of the fingers, hands, and legs), deficits in learning and memory, poor abstract thinking, and poor problem solving.
What is the cause of schizophrenia?
Both adoption studies and twin studies indicate that schizophrenia is a heritable trait although, it is not due to a single dominant or recessive gene. So far, no single gene has been shown to cause schizophrenia. Rather, several genes are involved. Having a “schizophrenia gene” causes a susceptibility to develop schizophrenia - triggered by other factors. There is a heritability component – is something in the genes that is passed onto the offspring, which we know because relatives have a higher chance of having schizophrenia.
What are the genetic of schizophrenia?
One rare mutation involves a gene known as DISC1 (disrupted in schizophrenia 1). Involved in the regulation of neurogenesis, neuronal migration, postsynaptic density in excitatory neurons, and mitochondria function. Its presence appears to increase the chance of schizophrenia by a factor of 50. More than 100 genes have been associated with schizophrenia. Also increases the incidence of other mental disorders, including BD, MD, and autism (Kim et al., 2009).
What are the affects of paternal age?
The effect of paternal age provides further evidence that genetic mutations may affect the incidence of schizophrenia (Brown et al., 2002; Sipos et al., 2004). Several studies have found that the children of older fathers are more likely to develop schizophrenia. Most likely due to mutations in the spermatocytes, the cells that produce sperm. Following puberty, these cells divide every 16 days, which means that they have divided approximately 540 times by age 35. In contrast, a woman’s oocytes divide 23 times before birth and only once after that.
What is the early neurodevelopment model?
Fixed lesion from early life interacts with normal neurodevelopment and lies dormant until the brain matures sufficiently to call into operation the damaged systems (Murray & Lewis, 1987).
What is early evidence for schizophrenia suggesting abnormal brain developmental?
Home movies from families with a schizophrenic child (Walker et al 1994,1996) - Independent observers examined the behavior of the children. Those who subsequently became schizophrenic displayed more negative affect in their facial expressions and more likely to do abnormal movements.
In 1972, 265 Danish children aged 11–13 years, were videotaped briefly while eating lunch (Schiffman et al. 2004) - Blind raters, found that the children who later developed schizophrenia displayed less sociability and deficient psychomotor functioning.
What are physical abnormalities seen in people with schizophrenia?
Minor physical anomalies, such as especially wide-set or narrow-set eyes, have also been shown to be associated with the incidence of schizophrenia. First reported in the late 19th ce by Kraepelin. People with schizophrenic relatives normally have ~12% chance of developing schizophrenia but this increases to ~31% in people who also have minor physical anomalies.
What is the late neurodevelopment model?
schizophrenia may result from an abnormality in adolescence when synaptic pruning takes place (Feinberg, 1983).
