Schizophrenia Flashcards
Psychiatric disorders
Disorders of psychological function sufficiently severe(ernstig genoeg) to require treatment
DSM-5
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association
2 main difficulties in diagnosing particular psychiatric disorders
- Patients suffering from the same disorder often display different symptoms, and
- Patients suffering from different disorders often display many of the same symptoms.
Schizophrenia means…
the splitting of psychic functions
Waxy flexibility
Reacting like a mannequin, not resisting movement and holding new position until being moved again.
Schizophrenia with catatonia
Schizophrenia characterized by long periods of immobility and waxy flexibility
Echolalia
Vocalized repetition of some or all of what has just been heard
Positive symptoms
Symptoms that seem to represent an excess of typical function
Negative symptoms
Symptoms that seem to represent a reduction or loss of typical function
Examples of positive symptoms
- Delusions. Delusions of being controlled (e.g., “Martians are making me steal”), delusions of persecution (e.g., “My mother is poisoning me”), or delusions of grandeur (e.g., “Steph Curry admires my jump shot”).
- Hallucinations. Imaginary voices making critical comments or telling patients what to do.
- Inappropriate affect. Failure to react with the appropriate emotion to positive or negative events.
- Disorganized speech or thought. Illogical thinking, peculiar associations among ideas, belief in supernatural forces.
- Odd behavior. Difficulty performing everyday tasks, lack of personal hygiene, talking in rhymes.
Examples of negative symptoms
- Affective flattening –> Diminished emotional expression.
- Avolition –> Reduction or absence of motivation.
- Catatonia –> Remaining motionless, often in awkward positions for long periods.
Series of studies that established schizophrenia’s genetic basis
- Although only 1 percent of the population develops schizophrenia, the probability of schizophrenia occurring in a close biological relative (i.e., a parent, child, or sibling) of a patient with schizophrenia is about 10 percent, even if the patient with schizophrenia was adopted shortly after birth by a healthy family.
- The concordance rates for schizophrenia are higher in monozygotic twins (45–50 percent) than in dizygotic twins (10–17 percent).
- Adoption studies found that the risk of schizophrenia is increased by the presence of the disorder in biological parents but not by its presence in adoptive parents.
Variety of early experiential factors have been implicated in the development of schizophrenia
- Birth complications, maternal stress, prenatal infections, socioeconomic factors, urban birth or residing in an urban setting, and childhood adversity.
- Such early experiences are thought to alter the typical course of neurodevelopment leading to schizophrenia in individuals who have a genetic susceptibility, presumably through epigenetic mechanisms.
Supporting neurodevelopmental theory of schizophrenia are:
- The fact that schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders share many of the same causal factors (e.g., genetic risk factors, environmental triggers)
- The study of two 20th-century famines(hongersnoden): Fetuses whose pregnant mothers suffered in those famines were more likely to develop schizophrenia as adults.
Antipsychotic drug
A drug that is meant to treat certain symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorders.
Chlorpromazine
- Was developed by a French drug company as an antihistamine.
- In 1950, a surgeon noticed that chlorpromazine given prior to surgery to counteract swelling had calming effect on some of his patients, and he suggested that it might have a calming effect on difficult to handle patients with psychosis.
- Discovery that chlorpromazine alleviates the symptoms of schizophrenia: Agitated patients with schizophrenia were calmed by chlorpromazine, and emotionally blunted patients with schizophrenia were activated by it.
- Chlorpromazine does not cure schizophrenia, but often reduces the severity of symptoms enough to allow institutionalized patients to be discharged.
Psychosis
A loss of touch with reality
Reserpine
- The active ingredient of the snakeroot plant which had long been used in India for the treatment of mental illness.
- Gave reserpine to his patients with schizophrenia and confirmed its antipsychotic action.
- No longer used in the treatment of schizophrenia because it produces a dangerous decline in blood pressure at the doses needed for successful treatment.