Psychosis: intro to psychotic symptoms

Question 1

What is psychosis?

Answer 1

A mental disorder in which all the aspects shown below are all sufficiently impaired, interfering with patient’s capacity to deal with reality.

Thoughts
Affective response or ability to recognise reality
Ability to communicate and relate to other

Question 2

What is the classic characteristics of psychosis?

Answer 2

• Hallucinations
• Delusions
• Disorder of form of thought

Question 3

What is dementia praecox now known as?

Answer 3

Schizophrenia

Question 4

Psychosis is characterised by a lack of insight. True/false?

Answer 4

True

Question 5

Psychosis has no effect on the individuals functioning and interpersonal relationships. True/false?

Answer 5

False. Psychosis does have an effect on the individuals functioning and interpersonal relationships.

Question 6

Some symptoms of psychosis?

Answer 6

• Hallucinations
• Delusions (fixed, falsely lead belief, impervious to logical argument/evidence).
• Ideas of reference
• Forward thought disorder
• Thought interference
• Loss of insight

Question 7

What is a hallucination?

Answer 7

Perception that occurs in the absence of an external stimulus.

Experienced as originating in real space, not in your thoughts (e.g. not like inner speech).

Question 8

What hallucination types can occur?

Answer 8

Any of the 5 senses:

• Gustatory (taste)
• Tactile (touch)
• Visual (sight)
• Auditory (sound)
• Olfactory (smell)

Question 9

What are ideas of reference?

Answer 9

False beliefs that random or irrelevant occurrences in the world directly relate to oneself.

Examples include:

• Thinking there is a message in newspaper about them.
• Seeing meaning in other peoples gestures.
• Knowing that other peoples conversations or social media postings are about them.

Question 10

Types of thought interference?

Answer 10

Thought insertion

Thought withdrawal

Thought broadcasting

Thought blocking

Question 11

What is thought insertion example?

Answer 11

“There are thoughts being put into my head that don’t belong to me - haven’t thought them”

Question 12

What is thought withdrawal example?

Answer 12

“They can extract the information from me using the internet, they take the thoughts out of my head”.

Question 13

What is thought broadcasting example?

Answer 13

“It’s like everyone can know what I’m thinking - sky dish is beaming my thoughts to the neighbour”

Question 14

What is thought blocking example?

Answer 14

“It’s like i get halfway through thinking something and the thoughts just dry up and I can’t think anything for a while”.

Question 15

Since thoughts cannot be directly observed, they must be observed through the patients speech. True/false?

Answer 15

True

Question 16

What is Knight’s move thinking?

Answer 16

A form of formal thought disorder, common in psychosis, in which connections between sentences or parts of sentences are without a coherent train of thought.

AKA lack of thought coherence. Topic changing from one sentence to the next.

Question 17

What are neologisms?

Answer 17

A schizophrenia speech pattern where new words or phrases are invented.

Patient will make up new words that are in their “dictionary”.

Question 18

What is verbigeration/word salad?

Answer 18

A jumble of extremely incoherent speech as sometimes observed in schizophrenia

e.g. happy green friendly running bananas.

Question 19

What is tangentiality?

Answer 19

A disturbance in the thought process that causes the individual to relate excessive or irrelevant detail that never reaches the essential point of a conversation or the desired answer to a question.