Schizophrenia

Question 1

Schizophrenia

Answer 1

a psychotic disorder involving serious impairment of attention, thought, language, emotion, and behaviour
•Coined by Eugen Bleuler
•Affects 1% of people in Canada

Question 2

What does a diagnosis of schizophrenia require?

Answer 2

Evidence that a person misinterprets reality, and exhibits disordered attention, thought or perception

Question 3

Delusions

Answer 3

false beliefs, often involving themes of persecution or grandeur, that are sustained in the face of evidence that normally would be sufficient to destroy them

Question 4

What are two types of dilution?

Answer 4

Dilution of persecution

Dilution of grandeur

Question 5

Hallucinations

Answer 5

false perceptions that have a compelling sense of reality (typically voices speaking to the patient)

Question 6

What are 3 types of affects related to schizophrenia?

Answer 6

• Blunted affect: manifesting less sadness, joy and anger than most people
• Flat affect: showing almost no emotion at all
• Inappropriate affect: wrong emotions for the situation

Question 7

What are the 4 subtypes of schizophrenia in the old DSM-IV-TR ?

Answer 7

Paranoid
Disorganized
Catatonic
Undifferentiated

Question 8

What is typical for patients in catatonic state (not just for schizophrenia) ?

Answer 8

Striking motor disturbances,
• From muscular rigidity to random or repetitive movements

Catatonics can alternate between stuporous states in which they seem oblivious to reality and agitated excitement during which they can be dangerous to others

Question 9

What is waxy flexibility?

Answer 9

Catatonics in a stuporous state may exhibit a waxy flexibility in which their limbs can be moulded by another person into grotesque positions that they will then maintain for hours

Question 10

Type 1 schizophrenia

Answer 10

subtype of schizophrenia characterized by a predominance of positive symptoms
•subtype of schizophrenia characterized by a predominance of positive symptoms

Question 11

Positive symptoms

Answer 11

• Better prognosis for recovery

* schizophrenic symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, and disordered speech and thinking

Question 12

Type 2 Schizophrenia

Answer 12

subtype of schizophrenia characterized by negative symptoms

Question 13

Negative symptoms

Answer 13

• associated with a long history of poor functioning prior to hospitalization and poor outcome following treatment
• schizophrenic symptoms that reflect a lack of normal reactions, such as emotions or social behaviours

Question 14

Structural differences (in brain) are more common in what type of schizophrenia?

Answer 14

Negative-Symptom

Question 15

Brain atrophy

Answer 15

A general loss of deterioration of neurons in the cerebral cortex and limbic systems, together with enlarged ventricles (cavities that contain cerebrospinal fluid)

Question 16

What does the neurodegenerative hypothesis say?

Answer 16

Destruction of neural tissue can cause schizophrenia

Question 17

What brain abnormalities are associated with schizophrenia?

Answer 17

• Brain atrophy
• Abnormalities in the thalamus which sends bad information to the cerebral cortex accounts for disordered attention and perception

Question 18

Dopamine Hypothesis

Answer 18

view that the symptoms of schizophrenia (particularly positive) are produced by overactivity of the dopamine system in areas of the brain that regulate emotional expression, motivated behaviour, and cognitive functioning
•People diagnosed with schizophrenia have more dopamine receptors on neuron membranes, and the receptors are overreactive

Question 19

How do antipsychotic drugs work?

Answer 19

Reduce dopamine -produces synaptic activity

Question 20

What are some biochemical factors to schizophrenia?

Answer 20

Dopamine overactivity

Deficiency of neural input from cortical areas play a role

Question 21

Regression

Answer 21

a psychoanalytic defence mechanism in which a person retreats back to an earlier stage of development in response to stress

Question 22

The Social Causation Hypothesis

Answer 22

The higher prevalence of schizophrenia to the higher levels of stress that low-income people experience, particularly within urban environments

Question 23

The Social Drift Hypothesis

Answer 23

As people develop schizophrenia, their personal and occupational functioning deteriorates, so that they drift down the socioeconomic ladder into poverty and migrate to low-cost urban environments

Question 24

Where is the likelihood of recovery of schizophrenia greater, developed or developing countries? Why?

Answer 24

Developing countries

•Stronger community orientation and greater social support extended to disturbed people in developing countries

Question 25

What is the psychoanalyst perspective of schizophrenia?
What is the psychodynamic?
Cognitive?

Answer 25

Psychoanalyst: Regression

Psychodynamic: Focusing on the interpersonal withdrawal, view the disorder as a retreat from an interpersonal world that has become too stressful to deal with

Cognitive: A defect in the attentional mechanism that filters out irrelevant stimuli. The stimulus overload produces distractibility, thought disorganization and the sense of being overwhelmed by disconnected thoughts and ideas

Question 26

What did PET scans reveal at times when schizophrenics were hearing voices?

Answer 26

The auditory and visual areas of the cortex were highly active, but there was no activity in the prefrontal cortex (prefrontal function to distinguish reality from fantasy)

Question 27

Expressed emotion

Answer 27

a family interaction pattern involving criticism, hostility, and overinvolvement that is associated with relapse when formerly hospitalized schizophrenic patients return home

Question 28

What is a theory of family dynamics on biological vulnerability?

Answer 28

Biological vulnerability factor must be present if stressful familial events are to cause their damage