Symptoms

• Schizophrenia

  A psychotic disorder where contact with reality and insight are severely impaired

  • 1% prevalence in the world wide population
  • twice as many men as women have been diagnosed
  • diagnosed using the DSM or ICD system that looks for clusters of symptoms and then the clinician will see how they match to a particular disorder
  • DSM requires one positive symptom
  • ICD requires two or more negative symptoms
• Positive symptoms

  Atypical symptoms experienced in addition to normal experiences

  • delusions - beliefs that have no basis in reality, e.g. believing that you are Jesus Christ
  • hallucinations - sensory experiences that have no basis in reality, e.g. auditory hallucinations - hearing voices
  • disorganised speech (not on spec) - speech can be incoherent and speaker may change topic mid sentence
• Negative symptoms

  Atypical experiences that represent the loss of a normal experience, e.g. loss of clear thinking or the loss of motivation

  • speech poverty - reduced frequency and quality of speech
  • avolition - lack of motivation to carry out daily tasks, resulting in a lowered activity level, such as finding it hard to keep up with hygeine and a lack of energy
• Symptom overlap

  • hard to distinguish from bipolar disorder
  • schizophrenia is often co-morbid and occurs alongside
  • depression 50%
  • substance misuse 47%
  • OCD 23%