Topic 8 - Schizophrenia Flashcards
(55 cards)
What is schizophrenia?
A psychotic disorder marked by secretly impaired thinking, emotions and behaviours.
Schizophrenia parents and typically unable to what?
Filter sensory stimuli and may have enhanced perceptions of sounds, colours and other features of the environment.
What are positive symptoms and give examples?
They enhance typical experience of sufferers and occur in addition to their normal experiences. Eg. Hallucinations and delusions.
What are negative symptoms and give examples.
Take away from the typical experience of sufferers, and so represents a ‘loss’ of experience. Eg. Speech poverty and avolition.
What are hallucinations?
A distorted view/ perception of real stimuli or perception of stimuli which have no basis in reality.
What are auditory hallucinations and what causes them?
Hallucinating the voices of loved ones or the deceased and are thought to be caused by an excess of dopamine receptors in Broca’s area.
What are delusions and give an example?
A set of beliefs with no basis in reality at all. Eg. the sufferer believes they are being stalked by the royal family.
What are the different types of delusions?
Persecutory, grandeur, jealousy, erotonomania and somatic delusion disorders.
What is speech poverty?
When there is an abnormally low level of the frequency and quality of speech. A common type is derailment which is thought to be caused by dysfunctions in the central control (Firth et al 1992).
What is avolition?
A subjective reduction in interests, desires or goals. The inability to cope with the normal pressures and motivations associated with everyday tasks.
What are the two types of classification systems for mental disorders?
The diagnostic and the statistical manual (DSM) and the international classification of disease.(ICD)
What does the DSM-V require?
- 1 positive symptom must be present for a significant period of time during a 1 month period, + 1 other positive or negative symptom, for diagnosis,
- Disorganised speech (positive)
- Used to have subtypes but not in this version.
What does the ICD require?
- 2 or more negative symptoms are sufficient for diagnosis.
- Speech poverty (negative)
- A range of subtypes are recognised e.g.
Paranoid schizophrenia – powerful hallucinations/delusions but few other symptoms.
Hebephrenic schizophrenia – primarily negative symptoms.
Catatonic schizophrenia – disturbance to movement.
What is Co-morbidity?
Two or more conditions occurring together. Co-morbidity calls into question the validity of diagnosis because they could actually be a single condition.
What is Symptom overlap?
Symptoms of schizophrenia also being symptoms of other conditions.
What is gender bias?
A particular gender being diagnosed more prevalently than others.
What is cultural bias?
A particular races/cultures being diagnosed more prevalently than others.
What did Cheniaux et al. (2009) do and explain findings?
Had 2 psychiatrists diagnose 100 patients using both DSM and ICD criteria.
One diagnosed 26 with schizophrenia using DSM and 44 with ICD.
The other diagnosed 13 with DSM and 24 using ICD.
This shows poor inter-rater reliability.
What did Rosenhan (1973) do and what did he find?
sent 8 people into a psychiatric hospital and report that a voice said words like ‘thud’, ‘empty’, or ‘hollow’. Then when admitted they acted ‘normally’. All except 1 were diagnosed with schizophrenia and stayed for between 7 to 52 days.
Rosenhan then told institutions to expect other individuals to try and get admitted. 41 were suspected of being fakes and 19 of those had been diagnosed by 2 members of staff. In fact, none had been sent at all. Rosenhan then told institutions to expect other individuals to try and get admitted. 41 were suspected of being fakes and 19 of those had been diagnosed by 2 members of staff. In fact, none had been sent at all.
What did Buckley et al. (2009) find?
He concluded that around half of patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia also have a diagnosis of depression (50%) or substance abuse (47%). PTSD occurred in 29% of cases and OCD in 23%.
This challenges both classification and diagnosis of schizophrenia.
What did Longenecker et al. (2010) conclude?
He concluded that since the 80s, men have been diagnosed with schizophrenia more often than women (prior to this there appears to have been no difference).
This could be due to men being more genetically vulnerable, or a gender bias in diagnosis.
What did Cotton et al (2009) find?
He found that female patients typically function better than men when suffering with schizophrenia. They are more likely to work and have good family relationships.
This could explain why women could be underdiagnosed.
What did Escobar (2012) suggest?
Suggested that (overwhelmingly white) psychiatrists may tend to over-interpret symptoms and distrust the honesty of black people during diagnosis.
What was the Anti-psychiatry movement?
Some believed in this as they disagreed with the use of asylums, or the idea at the time that homosexuality was a mental illness, or the use of electric shock treatments.
