schizophrenia

• define schizophrenia


  Schizophrenia is a mood disorder, characterized by disturbances in perception, thought, mood, and behavior.
• statistics of schizophrenia


  -1% of the worlds population suffer from it

  -more common in men than women

  -1/3 of suffers will only have 1/2 episodes in a life time

  -1/3 of suffers require medication for the rest of their life

  -1/3 of suffers have severe symptoms and will not be able to live a normal life

  -ages 15 onwards typically
• the 2 main systems to classify mental disorders

  1) International classification of disease edition 10 (ICD-10)

  2) Diagnostic and statistical manual edition 5 (DSM-5/DSM-V)
• international classification of disease edition aims

  focuses on the positive symptoms - delusions, hallucinations or speech disorganisation
• diagnostic and statical manual edition 5 aims

  focuses on negative symptoms - schizophrenia and alogia (poverty of speech)
• positive symptoms


  are those that appear to reflex an excess or distortion of normal functions
• negative symptoms


  appear to reflect diminution or loss of normal functions
• paranoid type


  characterised by strong delusions and hallucinations
• hebephrenic type


  characterised by mainly negative symptoms
• catatonic type


  characterised by disturbance to movement
• 2 examples of positive symptoms


  delusions- bizarre beliefs that seem real

  hallucinations- unreal perceptions of the environment that are auditory, visual or sensory.
• 2 examples of negative symptoms

  speech poverty (alogia)- the lessening of speech fluency and production.

  avolition is the reduction of interests an desires and any goal-directed behaviour
• in biological explanations, what is it meant by neural correlates

  changes in the neural events and mechanisms that result in the characteristics symptoms of a disorder, in this case the patient may have damaged connections between hippocampus and prefrontal cortex
• outline dopamine hypothesis as an explanation for schizophrenia


  when the neurotransmitter dopamine is in excess in regions of the brain, positive symptoms of schizophrenia can be observed.
• define double bind theory


  refers to receiving contradictory information from family members
• define expressed emotions


  this refers to a family style in which there may be over involvement in a child's life and poor style of communication
• how can high EE environment lead to schizophrenia

  suggests receiving contradictory information (told 'I love you' by a crying person) makes an individual unable to respond to future information, causing cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia.
• how does the cognitive approach explain hallucinations

  hallucinating individuals experience hyper vigilance due to an excessive focus on auditory stimuli, such individuals find it hard to distinguish between imagery and sensory based perception.
• how does cognitive approach explain delusions

  explains that's during the formation of delusions, patients have their interpretations of their experiences controlled by inadequate processing of information.
• Atypical antipsychotics


  second generation antipsychotics. treat positive and negative symptoms. treats hallucinations, delusions. stops dopamine from binding to the them.

  examples- clozapine
• Typical antipsychotics


  First generation antipsychotics. treat schizophrenia. developed to control excitement and agitation. treats people at any individual. works by blocking the dopamine receptors in the brain.
• why do atypical antipsychotics run the risk of fewer side effects?

  they do not only block D2 receptors, but have a stronger affinity for serotonin receptors and lower affinity for D2 receptors, believed to reduce the side effects
• how do antipsychotic work

  they are dopamine antagonist which are substances that decrease the activity of dopamine, by blocking receptors so dopamine cannot bind to them and stimulate them.
• why are drug therapies preferred than other therapies?

  they are effective

  they are cheap

  require less effort on parts of the patients, increasing the chances on them persisting on the treatment
• what is the 'token economy'

  form of therapy in which desirable behaviours are encouraged by the use if reinforcements. rewards are given in exchange in tokens earned when desirable behaviours are performed.
• why is token economy considered unethical

  - For token economy to work, psychiatrists have to be in control over food and other things that act as primary reinforcers.

  - In order for patients to have access to these things, they have to exchange tokens given to them by the psychiatrists.

  - This contradicts the notion that all humans have the right to things like privacy and food without having to earn them.
• Outline the interactionist approach to schizophrenia

  this is a compromise explanation that suggests schizophrenia develops in individuals who have a genetic vulnerability (diathesis) following an activity event (stress).
• symptom overlap


  some symptoms may not unique to one disorder instead shared amongst many disorders. example is social anhedonia, common between depression and schizophrenia patients.
• comorbity


  the co-occurrence of two or more disorders in a single individual
• candidate genes


  Individual genes are believed to be associated with risk of inheritance
• gene mutation


  schizophrenia can also have a genetic link without a family history of the disorder. caused by a mutation in parental DNA which can be caused by radiation, poison or viral infection.