Key Terms

Question 1

Schizophrenia

Answer 1

A severe mental disorder where people loose contact with reality and insight are impaired e.g psychosis

Question 2

Classification of mental disorder

Answer 2

The process of organising symptoms into categories based on which symptoms frequently cluster together

Question 3

Positive symptoms of schizophrenia

Answer 3

Atypical symptoms experienced IN ADDITION to normal experiences. They include hallucinations and delusions

Question 4

Hallucinations

Answer 4

Sensory experiences that have either no basis in reality or are distorted perceptions of things that are there

Question 5

Delusions

Answer 5

Involve beliefs that have no basis in reality e.g a person believes that they are someone else or that they are the victim of a conspiracy

Question 6

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia

Answer 6

Loss of usual abilities and experiences

Question 7

Speech poverty

Answer 7

Reduced frequency and quality of speech

Question 8

Avolition

Answer 8

Loss of motivation to carry put tasks and results in lowered activity levels

Question 9

Co-morbidity

Answer 9

Occurrence of two disorders or conditions together e.g a person has both schizophrenia and a personality disorder. Where two conditions are frequently diagnosed together it calls into the question the validity of classifying the two disorders separately

Question 10

Symptom overlap

Answer 10

Two or more conditions share symptoms.

Question 11

Genetics

Answer 11

Genes consist of DNA strands. DNA produces ‘instructions’ for general physical features of an organism (such as eye colour, height) and also specific physical features (neurotransmitters and size of brain structures). These may impact on psychological features

Question 12

Neural correlates

Answer 12

Patterns of structure or activity in the brain that occur in conjunction with an experience and may be implicated in the origins of that experience

Question 13

Dopamine

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Family dysfunction

Answer 14

Refers to processes within a family such as poor family communication, cold parenting and high levels of expressed emotion. These may be risk factors for both the development and maintenance of schizophrenia

Question 15

Cognitive explanations

Answer 15

Explanations that focus on mental processes such as thinking, language and attention

Question 16

Dysfunctional thought processing

Answer 16

Information processing that does not represent reality accurately and produces undesirable consequences

Question 17

Antipsychotics

Answer 17

Drugs used to reduce the intensity of symptoms, of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia

Question 18

Typical antipsychotics

Answer 18

The first generation of drugs for schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, been used since the 1950s.

They work as dopamine antagonists and include chlorpromazine

Question 19

Atypical antipsychotics

Answer 19

Drugs for schizophrenia developed after typical antipsychotics. They typically target a range of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin.

E.g clozapine and risperidone

Question 20

Cognitive behaviour therapy

Answer 20

A methods for treating mental disorder based on both cognitive and behavioural techniques.

From the cognitive viewpoint the therapy aims to deal with thinking, such as challenging negative thoughts. The therapy includes behaviour al techniques

Question 21

Family therapy

Answer 21

A psychological therapy carried out with all or some members of a family with the aim of improving the communications within the family and reducing the stress of living as a family

Question 22

Token economies

Answer 22

A form of behavioural modification, where desirable behaviours are encouraged by the use of selective reinforcement

E.g people are given ‘tokens’ when they engage in socially desirable behaviours. The tokens are secondary reinforcers and can then be exchanged for primary reinforcers - food of privileges

Question 23

Interactionist approach

Answer 23

Suggests that the development of schizophrenia is due to the combined effects and interaction of biological and psychological factors

Question 24

Diathesis stress model

Answer 24

A psychological concept that a disorder is due to the interaction between predisposed vulnerability (Diathesis) and an environmental trigger later in life (trigger)