Schizophrenia Flashcards
What are the three significant categories of schizophrenia symptoms?
- positive symptoms
- negative symptoms
- cognitive symptoms
What are positive symptoms
- hallucinations
- delusions
- disorganized thoughts and behaviour
What are negative symptoms
- reduced emotional experience
- avolition
- alogia
- Diminished emotional expressiveness
- anhedonia
What are cognitive symptoms
- problems with attention
- problems with working memory
- impaired longer-term verbal memory
- difficulties in social cognition
What are common comorbid disorders of schizophrenia
- depression
- anxiety
- OCD
- neurodevelopmental and learning disorders
- substance abuse
how to differentiate schizophrenia from mood disorder with psychotic features
MDD with psychotic features has psychotic symptoms that only occur during the major depressive episode
how to differentiate schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder
the schizoaffective disorder requires mood episodes that occur for the majority of the illness
how to differentiate schizophrenia from cluster A personality disorder
cluster A personality disorder have psychotic symptoms that tend not to rise to the severity of full-blown delusions or hallucinations
how to differentiate schizophrenia from delusional disorder
the psychotic symptoms of delusional disorder are usually restricted to one or more delusions
how to differentiate schizophrenia from a brief psychotic disorder
psychotic symptoms only occur for a brief amount of time (less than one month) and they resolve on their own
how to differentiate schizophrenia from schizophreniform disorder
schizophreniform is only diagnosed when a person has had symptoms of schizophrenia that has last longer than 1 month but less than 6 months
if it exceeds 6 months diagnosis changes to schizophrenia
What are the premorbid features of schizophrenia
- lower intelligence and school achievement
- poorer social functioning
- lower positive emotionality
- greater negative emotionality
- motor abnormalities and late developmental milestones
What factors are associated with a worse prognosis
- longer psychotic symptoms go without treatment
- being male
- early age of onset
- poor premorbid functioning
- more severe negative symptoms
- family history
What is the lifetime prevalence rate for schizophrenia
0.5% - 1 %
What is the age of onset for schizophrenia
early 20s
What factors predict psychosis
- genetic risk
- deterioration in functioning
- higher levels of unusual thought content
- higher levels of suspicion and paranoia
- greater social impairment
- history of substance abuse