Schizophrenia

Question 1

In which gender is schizophrenia mostly associated with?

Answer 1

Its more commonly diagnosed in men.

Question 2

Symptoms of schizophrenia….

Answer 2

Interfere with everyday tasks, many suffer from being hospitalised or become homeless

Question 3

Classification of Schizophrenia

What are the two types of genes associated with the disorder?

Answer 3

DSM-5: Delusions, hallucinations, speech disorganisation

ICD-10: Two or more symptoms are sufficient for the classification of the disorder.

Question 4

Classification of schizophrenia

ICD-10

Answer 4

Recognises a range off sub-types of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is characterised by powerful delusions and hallucinations.

Question 5

What does Hepephrenic Schizophrenia primarily involve?

Answer 5

Negative symptoms

Question 6

What are the positive symptoms of Schizophrenia?

Answer 6

Hallucinations:
Unusual sensory experiences
Hallucinations relate to events in the environment
Voices heard

Delusions:
Known as paranoia
Delusions are irrational beliefs

Common delusions:
Important Historical, Political or religious figures

Commonly involved delusions:
Persecution
Aliens
Having superpowers

Question 7

Delusions can lead to what?

Answer 7

make a suffer of schizophrenia behave in ways that make sense to them but bizarre to others

Question 8

What are the negative symptoms of schizophrenia?

Answer 8

The loss of usual abilities
Avolition
Speech poverty

Question 9

What is Avolition?

Answer 9

Finding it difficult to begin or keep up with goal directed activity

Suffers of schizophrenia have sharply reduced motivation to carry out a range of activities

Question 10

(What is Avolition)

What Study can be associated with this?

Answer 10

Anderson (1982):
Identified that identifying signs of avolition: Poor hygiene and grooming, lack of persistence to work or education, lack of energy

Question 11

Evaluation (Limitation)

Answer 11

A limitation of Schizophrenia is that it has poor validity. One standard way to asses validity of diagnosis is criterion validity, looking at the figures in the cheniaux et al study above we can see that schizophrenia is much more likely to be diagnosed using ICD than DSM, This suggests Schizophrenia is either over diagnosed in ICD or under diagnosed in DSM. Therefore containing poor validity.

Question 12

Evaluation

Answer 12

Symptom Overlap
There is considerable overlap between the symptoms of schizophrenia and other conditions e.g both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder involves positive symptoms by avolition. This again calls into question the validity of both classification and diagnosis of schizophrenia. Under ICD a patient might be diagnosed as a schizophrenia, however, the same patient would receive a diagnosis of bipolar disorder according to DSM Criteria

Question 13

the validity of both c