schizophrenia

Question 2

freeman et al

Answer 2

• investigated whether participants without a history of mental illness will show persecutory ideation in VR and also investigated the emotional, cognitive factors factors that predict the likelihood of persecutory ideation being shown
• 12 males, 12 females from UCL, average age 26, recruited via volunteer sampling.
• participants were trained on VR, entered a library scene for 5 minutes. They were asked to explore the environment and form an impression of the people around them of what they might think of them. 5 avatars in total, showed ambigous gestures occasionally such as smiling.
• after leaving the VR, participants were given a range of questionnaires including the Breif symptom inventory, assessed interpersonal sensitivity, psychotisicm, anxiety, depression, hostility.
• other questionnaires included close questions measuring anxiety, sense of presence, paranoid
• half of the participants completed the questionnaire before the VR, half completed after the VR
• semi structured interviews were constructed to understand the feelings of the participants in VR
• results shows that no siginificant differences in paranoid score between males and females, and those completed the questionnaire before and after the questionnaire.
• paraonid score in questionniare siginificantly correlated with paranoid score in interview
• higher levels of interpersonal sensitivity and higher levels of anxiety siginificantly correlated with persecutory ideation being shown in VR

Question 3

explanation of schizophrenia

Answer 3

genetic
- schizophrenia appeared to have a genetic cause based on different researchs
- family studies found that if you have a close family member with schizophernia, then you have higher chance of devloping it
- adorption studies also found that kids developed schizophrenia from their biological parents
- gottesman and shields found that the general population had 1 % chance of developing schizophrenia, but increase to 48% if you have a idential twin with it
- twin studies foud that monozygotic twins have higher concordance for schizophrenia then dizygotic twins. Monozygotic twins share 100 % of their DNA and dizytotic twins share 50 % of their DNA, which again proofed schizophrenia does have a genetic cause

biochemical : dopamine hypothesis
- the dopamine hypothesis suggest that people with schizophrenia has abnmormally high levels of dopamine in brain, which is linked to positive symptoms of schizophrenia
- research suggests that neurones that uses the neurotransmitter dopamine either fire too often or send to much information
- other research also suggest that increase in dopamine in ceratin brain regions can lead to certain symptoms. For example, a increase in dopamine in the Broca’s region can lead to impaired logical speech
- post mortem studies found that deseased individuals with schizophrenia had high levels of schizophrenia in the brain

cognitive (frith)
- explains schizophrenia as ‘abnormability of self monitoring’, schzhphorenia results from faulty thinking processes.
- people with schizophrenia may fail to recognise that their perceived hallucinations are in fact their inner speech and lead them to attribute what they are hearing to someone else
- frith also suggest that delusions is ‘misinterpretation of perception’
- people with schizophrenia may be applying logical reasoning to their hallucinations, this may lead to alien control, thought insertion
- thoughts that are self generated may be appeared to be coming from an external source
- eventually, frith explains those with negative symptoms of schzophrenia such as avolition may have difficulty generating spontaneous actions.
- for example, they may be able to answer a question asked by someone but they cannot find it possible to start a conversation with someone

Question 4

treatment of schizophrenia

Answer 4

biochemical : antipsychotics
- two types of antipsychotics, typical and atypical
- typical antipsychotics were developed to reduce the effect of dopamine in order to reduce positive symptoms of schizophrenia
- works by blocking dopamine receptors, but typical antipsychotics have many side effects.
- atypical antipsychotics were developed to reduce the effect of dopamine to reduce both positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
- also blocks dopamine receptors, but rapidlly dissociate
- less side effects

electro convulsive therapy
- passing electricity throught ht ebrain trying to get a seizure
- usually treatment for 6 to 12 sessions
- it is applied unilaterally to the non - dominant hemisphere
- affects the central nervous system and cardiovascular system
- may cuase temporal memory loss, or lasting neurological damage or even death
- ECT is rarely used due to it’s lack of evidence to proof it’s effectiveness
- evidence only suggest that ECT is effective in acute episodes of psychosis where a short, fast immediate improvement is needed

cognitive : sensky et al
- CBT is used to treat schizophrenia by challenging and identifying thoughts that determines the behaviour
- the study used a randomised controlled trial to compare the effectiveness between CBT and non-specific befriending intervention.
- patients with treatment resistance schizophrenia was used, randomly allocated to the 2 groups
- two measures was carried out by 2 experienced nurses. The CBT group followed distinct steps, the befriending group involved discussions about hobbies
- used two stndardised measures, CPRS and SANS to measure the effectiveness of two treatment
- both treatment showed siginificant improvement in positive symptoms
- CBT group showed more reduction in positive symptoms then befriending group at 9 month follow up
- sensky concluded that CBT is more effective in reducing positive and negative symptoms