Schizophrenia Flashcards
What is Schizophrenia?
A rare mental disorder involving impaired insight and loss of contact with reality.
What are the Clinical Characteristics of Schizophrenia?
Hallucinations - visual or auditory (hearing voices).
-Delusions (believing something that’s not real).
What are the Two Major Classification Systems?
-Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM-5) (mostly in the US).
-World Health Organisation (WHO) International Classification of Disease (ICD-11) (mostly in Europe).
What are Positive Symptoms of Schizophrenia?
They are additional experiences beyond those of the ordinary experience that appear to reflect an excess or distortion of normal functions.
What are the Examples of Positive Symptoms of Schizophrenia?
-Hallucinations -> Unreal perceptions of the environment that are usually auditory but may also be visual. olfactory (smelling things that other people can’t smell), or tactile.
-Delusions -> Bizarre irrational beliefes that seem real to the person with schizophrenia . Sometimes these delusions can be paranoid
(i.e. persecutory) in nature. Common delusions involve being an important historical, political or religious figure. Delusions also commonly involve being persecuted e.g. by government or aliens or of having superpowers. Another class of delusions is where sufferers may believe that they or part of them is under external control. Delusions can make the sufferer behave in ways that makes sense to them but may seem bizarre to others. Most sufferers are not aggressive but some delusions may lead to aggression.
What are Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia?
They involve the loss of usual abilities or experiences, which often persist even during periods of low (or absent) positive symptoms.
-Negative symptoms weaken the person’s ability to cope with everyday activites, affecting their quality of life and their ability to manage without significant outside help.
-Sufferers are often unaware of the etent of their negative symptoms.
-Negative symptoms respond poorly to antipsychotic treatment.
What are the Examples of Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia?
- Avolition (apathy) -> described as finding it difficult to begin or keep up with goal-directed activity. Sufferers often have sharply reduced motivation to carry out a rang of activities.
-Speech Poverty -> The ICD-10 recognises speech poverty as a negative symptom because the emphasis is on reduction in the amount and quality of speech in schizophrenia. This is sometimes accompanied by a delay in the sufferer’s verbal responses during the conversation.
However, the DSM system places its emphasis on speech disorganisation in which speech becomes incoherent or the speaker changes topic mid-sentence. This is classified in DSM-5 as a positive symptom of schizophrenia, whilst speech poverty remains a negative symptom.
What are the Differences between the Two Classifications of Schizophrenia?
-In the DSM-5 system one of the so-called positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions or speech disorganisation) must be present for diagnosis, whereas two or more negative symptoms are sufficient under ICD.
- ICD-10 recognises a range of subtypes of schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia which is characterised by powerful delusions and hallucinations but relatively few other symptoms, Hebephrenic schizophrenia which involves primarily negative symptoms, Catatonic schizophrenia’s characteristic is disturbance of movement which leaves the sufferer immobile or alternatively overactive. Previous editions of the DSM system have recognised these subtypes but was dropped in DSM-5.
