Schizophrenia Flashcards
What is Schizophrenia?
Classified as psychosis as the sufferer has no concept of reality
What are positive symptoms? Give examples
Positive symptoms reflect an excess or distortion of normal functioning
Examples : delusions and hallucinations
What are delusions and state the common types of delusions
False beliefs that are firmly held despite being completely illogical.
Delusional of persecution: belief that others want to harm, threaten or manipulate
Delusional of grandeur: important individual
Delusional of control: under control of an alien force
What are hallucinations?
Involve disturbances in perception
false perceptions that have no basis in reality
What are negative symptoms and give examples.
Cause a decline in functioning.
Speech poverty and avolition
What is speech poverty?
The inability to speak properly, characterised by the lack of ability to produce fluent words
thought to reflect slowing or blocked thoughts
What is avolition
The reduction, difficultly, or inability to start and continue with goal-directed behaviour.
E.G. no longer being interested in going out
What is the aim of Rosenhan study?
Investigate how situational factors affect a diagnosis of schizophrenia
How did Rosenhan conducted the study?
- 8 confederates acted as pseudo patients going to 12 hospitals
- real participants were hospital staff who did not know about the experiment
- complained about hearing voices “empty”, “hollow”, “thud”
- gave false name, occupations, symptoms, but real life histories
- pseudo patients were discharged only when they convinced staff they were sane
What are the results of the Rosenhan study?
-Staff diagnosed 11 pseudo patients with schizophrenia and one with manic-depression
-Staff never detected their sanity
-Average hospital stay was 19 days
Conclusion of Rosenhan study
-Psychiatric staff cannot reliably tell the difference between an insane or sane person, calling into question the reliability of a schizophrenia diagnosis
- ‘Normal’ behaviour was misinterpreted as ‘abnormal’ to support their idea that the pseudo patients had a mental illness, suggests validity of psychiatric diagnosis was low, DSM is flawed
What is comorbidity
More than one disorders or diseases that exist alongside a primary diagnosis
E.G. schizophrenia and a personality disorder
Evaluation of comorbidity
- Buckley
- Concluded around half of patients with diagnosis of sz have diagnosis of depression (50%) or substance abuse (47%)
- Post-traumatic stress occurred in 29% of cases and OCD in 23%
