forensics

• Schizophrenia


  A type of Psychotic Disorder. Psychotic disorders are among the most serious of all mental problems because a psychosis reflects a loss of contact with reality. It is a mental disorder that we most often associate with madness or insanity
• Symptoms of Schizophrenia


  • Delusions
  • Hallucinations
  • Disorganised speech
  • Behavioural Problems
  • Withdrawal
• Delusions


  • Persistent, false beliefs that are illogical or lack evidence to support them. Schizophrenics have very strong beliefs in their delusions, even if they are impossible or far-fetched. More than 50% of people with schizophrenia will experience delusions.
• Common delusions


  • Delusions of grandeur: believing that you are someone important or powerful
  • Delusions of persecution: believing you are being tormented or harassed by a person or group
  • Delusions of reference: believing that sounds or other stimuli have a personal reference to only you
  • Delusions of control: believing that your thoughts, feelings and behaviours are being controlled by an external force
• Hallucinations


  • Experiences of perceptions (sight, sound, smell, taste or feeling) which are not present in reality.
• Types of hallucinations


  • Auditory: hearing voices that may offer commentary on their behaviour, instructing them to do things, insulting them
  • Tactile (feeling): experiencing tingling, unexplained pain, burning sensations
  • Visual: seeing something that isn't actually there
  • Gustatory: tasting something that isn't actually there
  • Olfactory: smelling odours that aren't actually there
• Symptoms of schizophrenia vary from person to person
• About 1% of the population have paranoid schizophrenia. Symptoms start appearing in mid to late adolescents.
• Causes of Schizophrenia


  • Genetic factors
  • Changes in brain activity and structure
  • Environmental factors: complications during pregnancy, mother's lack of UV light, mother's exposure to toxins
  • Drug Use Factors: substance use (marijuana, cocaine, LSD and amphetamines)
• A diagnosis of schizophrenia is made when a person has some disturbance in thoughts, emotions or behaviours for at least 6 months, has at least 2 symptoms (negative, positive, disorganised or other) for at least one month, and displays some disorientation in social interactions or deterioration in school or work
• Treatments for Schizophrenia


  • Medications: anti-psychotics prescribed by psychiatrists
  • Hospitalisation (in severe cases)
  • Counselling and social support groups
  • Social Skills Training: teaches social, self-care and vocational skills
• Medications reduce hallucinations and delusions, and clarify thinking and perceptions of reality
• Counselling and social support groups help the patient and family deal with the stressors associated with the disorder, understand symptoms, develop communication skills, cope with hallucinations and delusions, and identify and reduce stressors
• Social Skills Training teaches social, self-care and vocational skills
• DSM-5


  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
• DSM-5


  • Classify mental disorders, allowing diagnosis and treatment
• Mental disorders


  Relationship with criminal behaviour
• Some mental health disorders are more common in violent persons and criminals e.g. schizophrenia & antisocial personality disorder
• Antisocial Personality Disorder


  Individuals exhibit antisocial behavior
• Antisocial Behaviour


  • Verbally or physically harmful to others, animals and/or property
  • Seriously violates social expectations or norms
• Approximately 4% of the population suffers from antisocial personality disorder
• 3% men, 1% women suffer from antisocial personality disorder
• Symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder


  • Non conformity to social norms
  • Deceitful and manipulative towards others, often to get something (money, drugs)
  • Impulsive, long list of past residences and employments
  • Irritable, aggressive and engages in physical violence
  • A reckless disregard for the safety of themselves and others
  • Consistently irresponsible, inability to hold down or find a job, fails to do such things as pay bills
  • No conscience
  • Shows few feelings beyond contempt for others
• Causes of Antisocial Personality Disorder


  • Unstable marriage
  • Harsh/inconsistent discipline
  • Child abuse (physical or sexual)
  • Frequent changes in residence or primary caregiver
  • Learning disabilities
  • Traumatic event in one's life such as the death of a parent
  • Neurological disorders, low IQ
  • Low socioeconomic status
  • Having a parent who suffers from the disorder or substance abuse
• Treatments and Therapies for Antisocial Personality Disorder


  • Extremely difficult to treat
  • Often a chronic condition
  • Some medications aid in controlling behaviour
  • Non compliance and abuse prevent widespread use
• Activity 1


  Watch the clip and list the characteristics she shows of APD
• Activity 2-5


  1. Watch the clip below

  2. What are the 7 symptoms of APD?

  3. How many do you need to have a diagnosis?

  4. What is the prevalence in the jail population?

  5. What causes APD according as explained by Dr.Grande?
• Memory


  An active information processing system that receives, organises, stores and recovers information
• Memory


  • It is much more sophisticated and different in many ways compared to a computer
• Processes involved in memory

  • Encoding
  • Storage
  • Retrieval
• Encoding


  Converting information into a useable form that can be understood by the brain and thus stored in memory

  
• Storage


  The retention of the encoded information over time
• Retrieval


  The recovery of stored information and bringing it into conscious awareness for use when needed
• Structures or stores of memory

  • Sensory memory
  • Short term memory (STM)
  • Long term memory (LTM)

  
• Sensory memory


  • Receives sensory information from the receptor sites of the senses from the outside world
  • Information is raw or unencoded
  • Information is stored for up to several milliseconds

  
• Sensory registers


  The five types of sensory memory, one for each sense: hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, smelling
• Function of sensory memory

  • Acts as a filter
  • Filters out unimportant information which is lost
  • Duration is brief but long enough for the brain to determine if information is important enough to transfer to STM

  
• We are not aware of information in our sensory memory

  
• Transferring information from sensory memory to short term memory

  Pay attention to information

  
• If sensory information is not attended to, its memory trace simply decays and disappears forever