Schizophrenia L1-3 Flashcards
What is schizophrenia?
- serious mental psychotic disorder
- characterised by profound disruption of cognition and emotion
- onset between 15 and 45 years
What does schizo affect?
- language
- thought
- perception
- emotions
- sense of self
It is more commonly diagnosed in?
- men than women
- cities rather than countryside
- working class than middle class people
Why is schizo referred to as a psychotic disorder rather than a neurotic disorder?
- psychotic refers to mental issues causing abnormal thinking and perceptions
- people lose touch with reality and themselves
- can end up homeless or hospitalised
- also not uncommon for them to attempt/commit suicide
What classification systems are used to diagnose schizo?
- DSM 5, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders
- ICD 11, The International Classification of Diseases
DSM
- devised by APA, American Psychological Association
- in 5th edition
- used in America
- for diagnosis of schizo need to show at least 2 or more positive symptoms for one month period
ICD
- devise by WHO, World Health Organisation
- in 11th edition
- used in Europe and other parts of the world
- need to show one positive and one negative symptom for at least one month for schizo diagnosis
What was done with subtypes of schizo?
- both manuals recognised but deleted
- made diagnosis more complex and had little effect on treatment
What are the types of Schizophrenia?
- Crow made distinction between 2 types
- Type 1 and Type 2
- Type 1, characterised by positive symptoms, better prospects for recovery
- Type 2, characterised by negative symptoms, poorer prospects for recovery
What type of symptoms are there?
- positive, symptoms that reflect an excess or distortion of normal functions
- negative, symptoms that appear to reflect a reduction or loss of normal functions, often persist even during low/absent levels of positive symptoms
What are the positive symptoms?
- hallucinations
- delusions
- disorganised speech
- grossly disorganised or catatonic behaviour
What are hallucinations, +s?
- sensory experiences of stimuli that have no basis of reality or are distorted perceptions of things that are there
- can be auditory, visual, olfactory (hearing) or tactile (touch+feeling)
Auditory - hearing voices, making comments or conversing with them, normally criticising them
Visual - seeing things that are not real e.g. distorted facial expressions on people
Olfactory - smelling things not real e.g. smelling disinfectant
Tactile - touching things not real e.g. bugs crawling on skin
What are delusions, +s?
- aka paranoia
- irrational, bizzare beliefs that seem real to the individual with SZ
- can take range of forms
- common delusions involves being important historical/political figure like Jesus
- or belief that they will be persecuted by gov/aliens
- delusions may involve body, believe parts of them under external control
- some can lead to aggression, but this is not often
What is disorganised speech, +s?
- result of abnormal thought processes
- problems with organising their thoughts which shows in their speech
- may slip from one topic to another, derailment, could occur mid sentence as well
- speech may be so inconsistent that it comes across as gibberish, referred to as ‘word salad’
(symptom diagnosed in DSM but not ICD, extra symptom)
What is grossly disorganised or catatonic behaviour, +s?
- catatonia refers to abnormality of movement and behaviour arising from a disturbed mental state
- inability or lack of motivation to complete or initiate a task
- can lead to problems with hygiene or person may be over active and going many things simultaneously
- person may dress in bizarre way, winter clothes in summer
(symptom diagnosed in DSM but not ICD, extra symptom)
What are the negative symptoms?
- speech poverty, alogia
- avolition
- affective flattening
- anhedonia
What is speech poverty/alogia, -s?
- changes in patterns of speech
- reduction in the amount and quality of speech
- may be accompanied by delay in verbal responses during convo
- may also be reflected in less complex syntax/sentence structuring
- associated with long illness and earlier onset
What is avolition, -s?
- can sometimes be called apathy
- described as finding it difficult to begin or keep up with a goal directed activity
- sufferers often have sharply reduced motivation to carry out a range of activities
- Andreason identified these signs of avolition: poor hygiene/grooming, lack of persistence in work/education and lack of energy
What is affective flattening, -s?
- reduction in the range and intensity of emotional expression
- including facial expression, voice tone, eye contact and body language
- sufferers have fewer body and facial movements and smiles
- less co-verbal behaviour
- when speaking may show a deficit in prosody (tone, tempo, loudness etc) which give cues to emotional content of convo
(symptom diagnosed in DSM but not ICD, extra symptom)
What is anhedonia, -s?
- loss of interest/pleasure in all or most activities
- or lack of reactivity to normally pleasurable stimuli
- physical anhedonia is inability to experience physical pleasures like pleasure from food, bodily contact etc.
- social anhedonia is inability to gain pleasure from interpersonal situations like interacting with people
(symptom diagnosed in DSM but not ICD, extra symptom)
What are the issues with the classification and diagnosis of SZ?
- reliability, consistency of measuring instrument
- validity, measuring what you mean to measure
- co-morbidity
- symptom overlap
- gender bias
- cultural bias
Issue of reliability, inter rater?
When 2 or more diagnosticians agree with the same diagnosis for the same individual, diagnosis done separately
- Whaley found inter rater between diagnosticians as low as +0.11 (DSM use)
= Cheniaux et al, more recent also showed low inter rater
= had 2 psychiatrists independently diagnose 100 schizo patients using ICD and DSM criteria
= inter rater poor, one diagnosed 26 with DSM and 44 with ICD
= other diagnosed 13 with DSM and 24 with ICD
So poor reliability is weakness of SZ
Issue of reliability, test retest?
When clinician makes same diagnosis on separate occasions but from same information
- Read et al, test retest reliability of SZ diagnosis only have 37% concordance rate
- (diff study) also noted a 1970 study where 194 Brit and 134 US psychiatrists provided diagnosis on basis of case description
- 2% of Brit diagnosed whilst 69% of US did
Suggests diagnosis has never been reliable