Classification

• Schizophrenia is characterised by delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech and behaviour
• Delusions are false beliefs that cannot be changed despite evidence to the contrary
• Hallucinations are sensory experiences without external stimuli (e.g hearing voices)
• Disorganised speech can include tangentiality (going off on irrelevant topics), derailment (changing subject) and neologisms (making up new words)
• Schizophrenia


  A severe mental disorder characterised by severe disruption in psychological functioning (thought and emotion) and loss of contact with external reality (psychosis)
• Approximately 1% of the general population will suffer from schizophrenia at some point in their lifetime
• Symptoms of schizophrenia


  • Positive symptoms
  • Negative symptoms
• Positive symptoms


  Reflect an addition to or exaggeration of normal functions
• Negative symptoms


  Reflect a loss or reduction of normal functions
• Hallucinations


  • Disturbances in perception
  • Perceptions of the environment that seem real to the individual with schizophrenia but are not real
  • Almost invariably unpleasant in nature
  • Can take many forms (auditory, visual, olfactory, somatic)
  • Auditory hallucinations are the most common
• Auditory hallucinations


  Individuals with schizophrenia report hearing a voice or several voices telling them to do things or commenting on their behaviour
• Delusions


  • False beliefs that seem real to the individual with schizophrenia but are not real
  • Can take many forms (delusions of grandeur, persecution, reference, control)
  • Often connected to hallucinations
• Speech poverty


  • Lessening of speech productivity, reflecting slowing or blocked thoughts
  • Fewer words produced, less complex syntax used
• Avolition


  • Inability to initiate and persist in goal-directed behaviour
  • Sharply reduced motivation to carry out a range of activities
  • Poor hygiene and grooming, lack of persistence in work or education, lack of energy