Schizophrenia key terms Flashcards
Classification of mental disorder
The process of organising symptoms into categories based on which symptoms frequently cluster together.
Schizophrenia
A severe metal disorder where contact with reality and insight are impaired, an example of psychosis.
Positive symptoms of schizophrenia
Atypical symptoms experienced in addition to normal experience. They include hallucinations and delusions.
Hallucinations
A positive symptom of schizophrenia. They are sensory experiences that have either no basis in reality or are distorted perceptions of things that are there.
Delusions
A positive symptom of schizophrenia. They involve beliefs that have no basis in reality, for example, a person believes they are someone else is the victim of a conspiracy.
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia
Atypical experiences that represent the loss of a usual experience such as loss of clear thinking or motivation.
Speech poverty
A negative symptom of schizophrenia. It involves reduced frequency and quality of speech.
Avolition
A negative symptom of schizophrenia. It involves loss of motivation to carry out tasks and results in lowered activity levels.
Co-morbidity
The occurrence of two disorders or conditions together, for example a person has both schizophrenia and a personality disorder. Where two conditional are frequently diagnosed together it calls into question the validity of classifying two disorders separately.
Symptom overlap
Occurs when two or more conditions share symptoms, this calls into question the classification of disorders separately.
Genetics
Genes consist of DNA strands. DNA produces ‘instruction’ for general physical features of an organism (eye colour). And also specific physical features (neurotransmitters). These may impact on psychological features (intelligence). Genes are inherited by the parents offspring.
Neural correlates
Patterns of structure or activity in the brain the occur in conjunction with an experience and may be implicated in the origins of that experience.
Dopamine
A neurotransmitter that generally has an excitatory effect and is linked to the sensation of pleasure. Unusually high levels are associated with schizophrenia and unusually low levels are associated with Parkinson’s disease.
Family dysfunction
Refers to the process within a family such as poor family communication, cold parenting and high levels of expressed emotion. These could be risk factors for both the development and maintenance of schizophrenia.
Cognitive explanations
Explanations that focus on mental processes such as thinking , language and attention.
Dysfunctional thought process
Information processing that does not represent reality accurately and produces an undesirable consequences.
Antipsychotics
Drugs used to reduce the intensity of symptoms, in particular the positive symptoms of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia.
Typical antipsychotics
The first generation of drugs for schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders , having been used since the 1950s. They work as dopamine antagonists and include chlorpromazine.
Atypical antipsychotics
Drugs for schizophrenia developed after typical antipsychotic. They typically target a range of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin. Examples include Clozapine and risperidone.
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
A method for treating mental disorders based on both cognitive and behavioural techniques. From the cognitive point of view the therapy aims to target the thinking by challenging negative thoughts. The therapy includes behavioural techniques.
Family therapy
A psychological therapy carried out with all or some members of a family with the aim of improving the communication from within the family and educing the stress of living as a family.
Token economics
A form of behavioural modification, where desirable behaviours are encouraged by the use of selective reinforcement. For example, people are given rewards (tokens) when they engage in socially desirable behaviour. The tokens are the secondary reinforcers and can be exchanged for the primary enforcers- eg food or privileges.
Interactionist approach
A way to explain the development of behaviour in terms of a range of factors including both biological and psychological. More importantly those factors do not simply add together, they combine in a way that can’t be predicted by each one separately- they interact.
Diathesis-stress model
An interactionist approach to explaining behaviour. For example, schizophrenia is explained as both an underlying vulnerability (diathesis) and a trigger (stressor), both of which are necessary for the onset of schizophrenia. In early versions of the Diathesis-stress model, vulnerability was genetic and triggers were psychological. Now both genes and trauma are seen as diathesis, and stress can be biological or psychological in nature.
