classification of schizophrenia

• Schizophrenia is a mental disorder. It is characterised by disruption in psychological functioning and loss of contact with reality.

  • mental illness usually occurs in late adolescence or early adulthood, but it can occur at any time in life.
  • in DSM it is classified as a psychosis
• DSM-5

  • two or more of the following each present for a significant portion of time during a 1 month period at least one of these must be 1, 2 or 3
  • for a complete diagnosis these must cause continuous disturbance for 6 months or more

  1. delusions
  2. hallucinations
  3. disorganized speech
  4. grossly disorganzied or catatonic behav
  5. negative symptoms
• level of functioning one or more major areas of life such as self-care

  is markedly below the level it was before onset
• hallucinations - Perceptual distortions or exaggerations in any of the senses

  • eg. auditory hallucinations - voice/s telling them how to behave or commenting on behaviour
• delusions

  • Firmly held but erroneous beliefs caused by distortion of reasoning or misinterpretations of perceptions or experiences
  • eg. Paranoid delusions involving the belief that a person is being conspired against
• speech poverty

  • Deficits in verbal fluency and productivity, less complex syntax (sentence structure)
  • eg. Producing fewer animal names than non-schizophrenics in the same time frame
• avolition

  • Reduction of self-initiated activities in interests and desires, inability to begin and persist with tasks
  • eg. Sitting in the house for hours each day doing nothing
• what is teh difference between a negative and positive symptom

  • Negative symptoms of schizophrenia involve the loss of usual abilities (including speech poverty and avolition)
  • positive means (rather than absence) an excess or distortion of normal functions: including hallucinations and delusions
• Classification is the process of organising symptoms into categories based on which symptoms cluster together in sufferers. Psychologists use the DSM and ICD (classification systems) to diagnose a patient with schizophrenia.

  Diagnosis refers to the assigning of a label of a disorder to a patient.