Schizophrenia Flashcards
A subtype of delusional disorder erototomania is
Great love for a person usually of higher status
What are the subtypes and why are they not in dsm-5
Paranoid
Disorganised
Catatonic
Did not yield much insight
Subtypes of schizophrenia include
Schizoaffective ( schizo + mood disorder)
Schizophreniform ( 1-6 months)
Delusional
Brief psychotic disorder ( sudden onset of symptoms
Disorganised, positive, negative symptoms have correlated behaviour
Hallucinations- emotional flattening-bizarre behaviour
Delusions- poverty of speech, asociality, apathy, a hedonic- disorganised speech
In what way is schizophrenia and schizoaffective different
Mood disorder
What is the prevelance of schizophrenia
Under 1%
What are the risks and causal factors
Genetic plays a role in development
Factors that genes implicated in susceptibility
A reduction of genes Fromm 100 to 50% reduces the risk by
80%
What are the major symptoms of schizophrenia?
Most sever form of mental illness.
Hallucinations, delusions, disorganised speech and behaviour, catatonic behaviour, negative flat affect and social withdrawal
Adoption studies such as the Finnish family, sows us that schizophrenia has the confirmation to
The diathesis-stress model. Is despite genetic susceptibility environment determined causal pathways to disease
what are the risk and causal factors associated with schizophrenia?
Genetic factors are clearly implicated in schizophrenia. having a relative with the disorder raises a person’s risk of developing schizophrenia —other factors that have been related to the development of schizophrenia include prenatal exposure to the influenza virus, early nutritional deficiencies, rhesus compatibility, maternal stress and perinatal birth complications. Urban living immigration and cannabis use in adolescence. Current thinking about schizophrenia emphasises the interplay between genetic environmental factors.
How is the brain affected in schizophrenia?
patience with schizophrenia have problems in many aspects of cognitive functioning they show a variety of attentional deficits such as poor P50 suppression they also show Eye tracking dysfunction.
there are many brain areas that are abnormal in schizophrenia. Including large enlarged ventricles which reflects decreased brain volume, frontal lobe dysfunction, reduced volume of the thalamus, and abnormalities in Temporal lobe areas such as the hippocampus in the amygdala. Major changes in the brain occurred during adolescence include synaptic pruning, decreases in the number of excitatory neurons, increases in the number of inhibitory neutrons.
Some abnormalities get worse over time. Ie neuroprogressive disorder
What neurotransmitters implicated in schizophrenia?
The most important neurotransmitters implicated in schizophrenia are dopamine and glutamate.
research shows that the dopamine D2 receptors of patients with schizophrenia are super sensitive to dopamine
Why is the family environment important for the well-being of patients with schizophrenia?
Patients with schizophrenia are more likely to relapsed if their relatives are high in expressed emotion. High EE environments may be stressful to patients and may trigger biological changes because this may trigger biological changes that cause disregulation in the dopamine system. This could lead to a return of symptoms.
Aberrant salience is ?
Dysregulated dopamine makes attentive stimuli more significant than it actually is
Oxygen deprivation leads to what?
Super sensitive to dopamine
What type of transmitter is Glutamate
Excitatory
Schizophrenia is a good example some study designs what’s retrospective bias or retrospective research strategy ?
hence schizophrenia has used perspective research
involves looking back in time collect information about how the patients behaved early in their lives the goal of identifying factors that might have been associated with what went wrong later a challenge with this technique is the potential for memories to be both faulty and selective
perspective research design which is a strategy that involves looking ahead in time to identify individuals who have a higher than average likelihood of focus research attention on them before any disorder manifests
Are hallucinations and delusions the first sign of schizophrenia?
Early motor abnormalities such as facial tics, tongue thrusts, blinking that become more increased in time
Are cognitive test confounded by long term medications and long hospitalisation?
Recently ill schizophrenics do equally as bad on cognitive tests than those who have had the illness for a long time. Tests include
Stimulus response
Continuous performance test (no.7 identify in a string)
Working memory.
What is High expressed emotion?
Direct causal link of relapse
private interview the researcher will take note of : criticism,hostility and emotional over involvement dislikes or disproval of the patient
extreme emotion dramatically over concerned attitude
This is perceived as stress by patients
What is a current investigation using fmri?
High EE may trigger unusual brain activity. Cortisol levels might somehow be involved in patterns of brain activity in ppl who are vulnerable
What is the estimate of schizophrenia change if we changed urban living into rural setting
30%
What are some of the hypotheses towards white immigration is associated with elevated risk of developing schizophrenia?
1/ immigrants more likely to receive this diagnosis because of cultural misunderstanding
2/ schizophrenics are more likely to move and live in another country
3/ immigrants discriminated against it could lead to a paranoid or suspicious outlook
4/ stress/ sensitive effects of using a list of substances such as cannabis use
Why is cannabis use linked to schizophrenia?
Twice as likely than normal population to use Comt gene (chromosome 22) plays a role in the breakdown of dopamine. Cannabis increases the synthesis of dopamine. Hence cannabis makes symptoms worse
