Schizophrenia symptoms and features

• • DSM5 requires 2/4 key symptoms

  one must be delusions/hallucinations/disorganised speech/negative symptoms

  • diagnosis is made after they’ve experienced 1m of active symptoms OR dysfunction for 6m
  • ICD-10 DOESN’T require 6m of dysfunction for diagnosis
• • schizophrenia—>psychotic disorder that affects thought, speech, feeling to such an extent that it alters perception of reality

  COGNITIVE SYMPTOMS:

  • difficulty in concentrating, memory, paying attention
• Positive symptoms in psychology refer to excess or distortion of normal functions
• Key positive symptoms include:

  • Hallucinations: hearing or seeing things that appear real but only exist in the mind, can include olfactory and somatosensory experiences
  • Delusions: false, fixed beliefs that persist despite clear evidence depicting their falsity, e.g., paranoia
  • Thought insertion: belief that one's thoughts have been placed by someone else
  • Disordered thinking: difficulty putting thoughts into logical sense, leading to incoherent speech characterized by derailment and tangentiality
  • Word salad/neologisms: blending words together to create new words, making it hard to follow the trail of thought
• Symptoms like thought broadcasting (belief that thoughts are being broadcast to others) and thought withdrawal (belief that outside forces are taking thoughts from the mind) are also considered positive symptoms
• When evaluating positive symptoms in diagnosis, they are given greater weight, although cultural differences can affect their interpretation
• Positive symptoms should not be weighted as much as negative symptoms in diagnosis, as they can be influenced by cultural variations and may not always indicate dysfunction
• NEGATIVE SYMPTOMS:

  • -ve symptoms—> deficit in the ability to perform normal functions
  • poverty of speech: limited speech
  • social withdrawal: no longer interacts with friends/family
  • flattening effect: lack of expression on face/voice

  evaluating negative symptoms:

  • less affected by cultural differences
  • can be objectively measured
  • eg flattening effect can be measured
• Schizophrenia affects 0.7-1% of the population
• The average life expectancy of individuals with schizophrenia is 10 years less than the average person
• Physical health risks associated with schizophrenia, such as suicide rates, may contribute to the lower life expectancy
• Duerr (2013) found that adolescents with psychotic symptoms are 70 times more likely to be suicidal
• Onset of schizophrenia is earlier for males than females
• Episodes of psychosis typically appear between late adolescence and the mid-thirties, with males experiencing it at a slightly earlier age than females
• Individuals who develop psychosis before late adolescence often have a worse prognosis, with the condition being more severe and lasting longer
• Approximately 50% of individuals with schizophrenia experience periods where they have symptoms and periods where they do not