Intro sz

• What’s schizophrenia?

  Serious mental illness that affects 1% of the population.It distort contact with reality and impairs a persons insight.

  Schizophrenia has no one defining characteristic.It’s a cluster of unrelated symptoms 
• What’s ICD?

  Used by the WHO 

  two or more negative symptoms are needed 
• What’s DSM-V ?

  Manual used by the APA

  1 positive symptom is sufficient for diagnosis 
• Positive Symptoms

  Something extra e.g. a behaviour or biological reaction that you didn’t have before.
• Negative Symptoms

  These reflect a reduction or loss of normal function.
• Hallucinations (positive)

  -unusual sensory experience 

  -generally visual or auditory,but not exclusively 
• Delusions (positive)

  -irrational beliefs 

  -grandeur,paranoid,external control
• Disorganised speech (positive)

  Incoherent,or speaker changes topics mid sentence 
• Avolition (negative)

  -apathy 

  -struggle with goal directed behaviour 

  -motivation 

  -andreason (1982) - 3 signs of avolition such as poor hygiene,lack of persistence in work or education and lack of energy 
• Speech poverty

  reduced in the amount and quality of speech 
• Anhedonia

  a loss of interest in pleasure in all or almost all activities to normal pleasurable stimuli. Pervasive, physical or social.
• Reliability

  consistency/repeatable 
• Validity

  legitimacy
• 4 factors which can impact validity

  -co morbidity 

  -symptom overlap

  -gender bias 

  -culture bias 
• One limitation is co-morbidity with other conditions.If conditions co-occur then they might be a single condition.Schizophrenia is commonly diagnosed with other  conditions.A study by Buckley concluded that schizophrenia is co-morbid with depression (50% of cases),substance abuse (47%) or OCD (23%).Therefore,this matters because it suggests that schizophrenia may not exist based a distinct condition.
• Another limitation is gender bias.Men are diagnosed with more schizophrenia more often than women,in a ratio of 1:4:1.This could be because men are more genetically vulnerable,or women have better social support,masking symptoms.Furthermore,this means that some women with schizophrenia aren’t diagnosed so miss out on helpful treatment.
• A further limitation is culture bias.Some symptoms e.g hearing voices are accepted in some cultures e.g Afro-Caribbean societies ‘hear voices’ from ancestors.Afro-Caribbean British men are up to 10x more likely to recieve a diagnosis as white British men,maybe due to over interpretation of symptoms by UK psychiatrists.Therefore,this matters because it means that Afro-Caribbean men living in the UK appear to be living in the uk appear to be discrimated against by a culturally biased diagnostic system.
• Lastly another limitation is there’s system overlap.There’s a overlap between the symptoms of schizophrenia and other conditions such as bipolar disorder involve delusions and avolition.Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may be the same condition (a classification issue).Schizophrenia is hard to distinguish from bipolar disorder (a diagnosis issue).Therefore,this matters as it means schizophrenia may not exist as a condition and if it does it’s hard to diagnose.