Schizophrenia

Define: Schizophrenia

A type of psychotic illness, a disorder where people lose touch with reality. Sufferers tend to have irrational beliefs, hear voices, see things which are not true or even there.

Define: Classification

Taking a set of symptoms and putting them into a category.

Define: Diagnosis

The clinical judgement that an individual is suffering from a disorder.

Define: Psychosis

A severe mental health problem where the individual loses contact with reality, they are unaware there is a problem.

Define: Positive Symptoms

Any change in behaviour which is excitatory, the addition of something.

Define: Negative Symptoms

Any change in behaviour which is a reduction or deficit of functions.

Define: Hallucinations

Sensory experiences such as hearing voices, visual distortions, seeing people or animals which are not real.

Define: Delusions

Irrational beliefs such as grandeur or paranoia, can concern the body such as belief of being under control of someone else.

Define: Alogia

Speech poverty. Characterised by changes in amount of speech or its quality. Some may have delays in verbal responses.

Define: Avolition

More commonly apathy. The loss of motivation to carry out tasks and results in lower activity levels.

Define: Co-Morbidity

When two or more medical conditions occur at the same time, or the tendency for this to happen.

Define: Symptom Overlap

The way symptoms extend between different disorders, leading to unreliable diagnosis.

Define: Blunted Affect

The inability to express emotions and negative feelings, expressions don’t show outwardly.

Define: Experiences of Control

The irrational belief that thoughts are being controlled by someone else, they are not one’s own, or thoughts are being planted.

Define: Disordered Thinking

A thought process is disjointed, there is a collapse or suddenly stops. Words may be randomly spoken or generally incoherent.

Define: Asociality

The lack of motivation to engage in social interaction.

Define: Echolalia

The pathological repletion of the words of others.

Define: Anhedonia

The lack of pleasure or the inability to feel pleasure from enjoyable activities.

Define: Delusions of grandeur

A false impression one’s own importance, can involve irrational belief of being an important historical, political, or religious figure.

Define: Delusions of persecution

Irrational belief that harm is going to occur, that they are being targeted by a particular group, eg the government, a superpower, or an individual.

Define: Prodromal Symptoms

An early symptom indicating the onset of a disorder, only seen in hindsight.

Define: Paranoia Type

The extreme feeling of suspicion or grandeur. Strong delusions and hallucinations.

Define: Catatonic Type

A person is withdrawn, mute, negative and may be either very immobile or very mobile.

Define: Hebephrenic Type

Primarily negative symptoms: apathy, lack of motivation.

Define: ICD

The International Classification of Diseases published by the World Health Organisation which classifies many disorders.

Define: DSM

The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association which classifies many disorders.

Define: Genetics

The study of heredity through genes and DNA.

Define: Concordance Rate

A statistical measure that describes the proportion of pairs that share an attribute given that one already possesses the trait.

Define: Dopamine

A neurotransmitter which plays a role in pleasure and reward, attention, movement and more.

Define: HypERdopaminergia

Excessive levels in the subcortex and Broca’s area.

Define: HypOdopaminergia

Low levels in the prefrontal cortex.

Define: Neural Correlates

An association between a physical occurrence in the nervous system (mainly the brain) and a mental state/event.

Define: Agonist

An antipsychotic drug that initiates a physiological response when combine with a receptor.

Define: Antagonist

Depresses the effect of an agonist.