PSYCHOLOGY - Schitzophrenia

Delusions

A false belief or judgement about reality

Persecutory delusions

Believing someone is following you

Delusions of Grandeur

Believing they are more important than they actually are

Delusions of Reference

Believing people are communicating through broadcast

Hallucinations

A bizarre, unreal perceptions of the environment. Can be visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and gustatory.

Disordered thinking

Insertions → Thoughts are being inserted into mind

Withdraw → Thoughts are being removed

Broadcast → Thoughts are being broadcasted

Affective flattening

No emotional cues

Avolition

Inability to engage in goal directed behaviours

Speech poverty

Lack of speech, making up words

Disorganised Schitzophrenia

* Disorganised speech, behaviour, flat or inappropriate affect
* Does not meet criteria for CATATONIC

Catatonic Schitzophrenia

* immobility or excessive motor activity that is purposeless
* Extreme negativity

Echolalia

Repetition of words

Echopraxia

Imitation of movements

Paranoid Schitzophrenia

* Preoccupation with one or more delusionary or hallucination
* Other symptoms - disorganised speech, flat affect or catatonic behaviour - are not present or are less prominent than these positive symptoms

Undifferentiated Schitzophrenia

* People who do not fit into the other categories
* Their symptoms are not predominantly positive, disorganised or movement disordered

Residual Schitzophrenia

* Not presently experiencing prominent symptoms

Brain areas associated with schizophrenia

* Ventricular enlargement
* Damage to the cerebral cortex
* Primary visual area in the occipital lobe
* Wernicke’s area

Dopamine Hypothesis

An excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine in certain brain regions are associated with positive symptoms.

Typical Antipsychotics

Traditional drugs - E.g. Chlorprozamine

Atypical Antipsychotics

Aimed to develop the effectiveness of Typical drugs - E.g. Clozapine

the Schizophregenic mother hypothesis

An arrogant lying mother - leads to Sz

Double Bind Theory

Conflicting messages - behaviour and words

Expressed Emotion

The level of negative emotion expressed toward the patient - criticism, Hostility and Emotional over-involvement

The 2 kinds of dysfunctional thought processing

* Metarepresentation
* Central control

Cognitive explanations of delusions

Evidence suggests people with Sz process information differently

Cognitive explanation of hallucinations

Baker and Morrison suggest that hallucinating patients with Sz are significantly more likely to misattribute the source of self-generated auditory experience to an external source

Stages of CBT

1. Assessment
2. Engagement
3. The ABC Model
4. Normalisation
5. Critical collaborative analysis
6. Developing alternative explanations

\

Family Therapy

the therapists work with the family and the patient to develop strategies to cope better with the mental disorder and its symptoms.

Token Economy Programme

A technique which reinforces appropriate behaviour by giving or withholding tokens which can be exchanged for privileges

The Diathesis - stress model

the model explains that individuals will develop Sz if they have a biological predisposition and if they are exposed to stressful situations

Interactionist Model

Acknowledges the influence of both biological and psychological factors in the development and maintenance of Sz

DSM-5

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders

Metarepresentation dysfunction

A type of dysfunctional thought processing that affects our ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour → this could cause us to believe our actions were being carried out by someone else

Central control dysfunction

A type of dysfunctional thought processing that affects our ability to suppress automatic responses while we perform deliberate actions →E.G. a person with Sz tends to experience derailment of thoughts because each word triggers associations