schizophrenia

• Examples of negative symptoms include social withdrawal, lack of motivation, reduced emotional expression, and difficulty in initiating and sustaining activities.
• Negative symptoms of schizophrenia

  • Loss of normal experiences and abilities, including abolition, lack of energy, sociability, affection, and personal hygiene
• Validity in the diagnosis and classification of schizophrenia

  Questions if a person has a disorder when diagnosed or if schizophrenia is a real disorder with clear and unique symptoms
• DSM-5 criteria for diagnosing schizophrenia
• Comorbidity of schizophrenia with other disorders
• Symptom overlap between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

  If the two disorders are so similar they may not be distinct and should be redefined
• Genetic explanation of schizophrenia

  • Genes code for variations in neural brain structure and biochemistry, disorder is polygenetic
• Fernando argues that people of afro-caribbean heritage in the UK are up to nine times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia
• Dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia

  • Symptoms are due to an imbalance of the dopamine neurotransmitter across the brain
• Buckley 2009 found comorbidity rates with schizophrenia: depression 50, drug abuse 47, PTSD 29, and OCD 23
• Reliability in the diagnosis of schizophrenia

  Interrater reliability measures if two observers agree on the diagnosis, test-retest reliability is the same doctor giving the same diagnosis over time
• Positive symptoms of schizophrenia


  • Experiences in addition to normal experiences such as hallucinations, hearing critical voices, and delusions
• Back 1963 found 153 patients diagnosed by multiple doctors only had 54 concordance rate between the doctor's assessments
• Summary of schizophrenia videos
• Cotton argues women's experience of schizophrenia is taken less seriously and under diagnosed compared to men
• Loring and Powell 1988 found gender and cultural bias in psychiatrist diagnosis of schizophrenia
• Glutamate in schizophrenia

  • Low quantities of glutamate in people with schizophrenia
• Neural correlates of schizophrenia


  • Variation in neural structure and biochemistry correlated with an increased risk of developing schizophrenia
• Large ventricles voids in the brain filled with cerebrospinal fluid have been correlated with schizophrenia
• Neurotransmitter glutamate


  • Involved in learning, attention, and memory
• Tanari 2004 study found that 5.8 percent of children adopted into psychologically Healthy Families developed schizophrenia compared to 36.8 percent of children raised in dysfunctional families
• The cognitive self-determinants perspective suggests that clients can reconstruct rational mental processes to control their disorder actively
• Psychological explanations for schizophrenia include family dysfunction, the schizophrenogenic mother theory, expressed emotion, and attention deficit theory
• Antipsychotics, also known as neuroleptics, are medications used to control the symptoms of psychosis, such as delusions and hallucinations
• Research evidence suggests that schizophrenia has a biological cause such as genetics and neurotransmitters
• Gottsman 1991 found a concordance rate for schizophrenia of 48 for identical twins (monozygotic) and 17 for non-identical twins (dizygotic), with the general population rate at one percent
• Glutamate is found in low quantities in people with schizophrenia
• Neurotransmitter dopamine


  • Linked to negative symptoms like abolition or speech poverty
• Luchet found in a meta-analysis that drug treatments normalizing dopamine levels were more effective than Placebo, supporting the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia
• People with schizophrenia have dysfunctional thought processing, faulty central control, and difficulty in suppressing automatic actions
• Relapse into schizophrenia is significantly more likely in families with issues of expressed emotion
• The diathesis-stress approach to explaining schizophrenia suggests that a biological genetic weakness (diathesis) combined with an environmental stressor triggers the disorder
• Typical antipsychotics, first-generation drugs, reduce positive symptoms by blocking dopamine receptors at the synapse
• Le chat: 'Drug treatments of symptoms were more effective than a placebo'
• Antipsychotic drugs

  • They treat positive symptoms by reducing dopamine activity
  • They have side effects such as dry mouth, constipation, lethargy, confusion, and tardive dyskinesia
• Clozapine was the most effective drug
• Combined treatment

  Patients significantly improved in severity and number of positive symptoms, spent fewer days in hospital receiving care
• Cognitive behavior therapy

  • Assumes schizophrenia results from dysfunctional thought processes
  • Therapist's role is to identify and challenge irrational beliefs
  • Reality testing is used to demonstrate rational thoughts
  • Family therapy aims to improve the home situation of the person with schizophrenia
  • Token economies use positive reinforcement to manage behavior
  • CBT does not produce unpleasant side effects of drug therapies
  • Family therapy aids in improving symptoms and avoiding admission into a mental health facility
• Family therapy

  Reduces relapse rates compared to standard outpatient care
• Introduction of antipsychotic drugs

  1950s