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Lecture notes schizophrenia
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Alevel AQA psychology- Full schizophrenia notes with evaluation points. clear and concise. easy to revise.
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Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness where contact with realityand insight are impaired, an example of psychosis.
● Classification is the process of organising symptoms into
categories based on which symptoms cluster together in
sufferers.
● Psychologists use the DSM and ICD to diagnose a patient with
schizophrenia.
● In order to diagnose Schizophrenia the Mental Health Profession
developed the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) still used
today as a method of classifying mental disorders (particularly
in the USA).
● It is also used as a basis for the ICD (International
Classification of Diseases) used by the World Health
Organisation in classifying all disorders (mental and physical).
● Positive symptoms are an excess or distortion of normal
functions, for example hallucinations, delusions and thought
disturbances such as thought insertion.
● Hallucinations are usually auditory or visual perceptions of
things that are not present. Imagined stimuli could involve any
of the senses. Voices are usually heard coming from outside the
person’s head giving instructions on how to behave.
● Delusions are false beliefs. Usually the person has convinced
him/herself that he/she is someone powerful or important, such
as Jesus Christ, the Queen (e.g. Delusions of Grandeur). There
are also delusions of being paranoid, worrying that people are
out to get them
● Psychomotor Disturbances: Stereotypyical - Rocking backwards and
forwards, twitches, & repetitive behaviors. Catatonia- staying
in position for hours/days on end, cut off from the world.
● Negative symptoms are a diminution or loss of normal functions
such as psychomotor disturbances, avolition (the reduction of
goal-directed behavior), disturbances of mood and thought
disorders.
● Thought disorder in which there are breaks in the train of
thought and the person appears to make illogical jumps from one
topic to another (loose association).
,● Words may become confused and sentences incoherent (so called
‘word salad). Broadcasting is a thought disorder whereby a
person believes their thoughts are being broadcast to others,
for example over the radio or through TV.
● Alogia - aka speech poverty – is a thought disorder were
correct words are used but with little meaning.
● Avolition: Lack of volition (i.e. desire): in which a person
becomes totally apathetic and sits around waiting for things to
happen. They engage in no self motivated behavior.
● For the classification system to be reliable, differfent
clinicians using the same system (e.g. DSM) should arrive at the
same diagnosis for the same individual.
● Reliability is the level of agreement on the diagnosis by
different psychiatrists across time and cultures; stability of
diagnosis over time given no change in symptoms.
● Validity - the extent to which schizophrenia is a unique
syndrome with characteristics, signs and symptoms.
● For the classification system to be valid it should be
meaningful and classify a real pattern of symptoms, which result
from a real underlying cause.
● Family studies find individuals who have schizophrenia and
determine whether their biological relatives are similarly
affected more often than non-biological relatives.
● There are two types of twins – identical (monozygotic) and
fraternal (dizygotic). To form identical twins, one fertilised
egg (ovum) splits and develops two babies with exactly the same
genetic information.
● Gottesman (1991) found that MZ twins have a 48% risk of getting
schizophrenia whereas DZ twins have a 17% risk rate. This is
evidence that the higher the degree of genetic relativeness, the
higher the risk of getting schizophrenia.
● Cardno et al (1999) found identical twins had a concordance rate
for schizophrenia of 40.8%, whereas non-identical twins had a
concordance rate of 5.3%.
● Tienari et al (1985) conducted a longitudinal study comparing
adopted children whose biological mothers had schizophrenia with
a control group of adoptees whose biological mothers did not
have schizophrenia. The researchers found that the children of
schizophrenic mothers were more likely to develop schizophrenia
, compared to controls, supporting the role of genetics in the
development of schizophrenia.
● Other factors: Although most studies suggest genetics play a
part in the development of schizophrenia, it is clear that other
factors are important too. If schizophrenia was 100% genetic,
you would expect concordance rates between identical twins to be
100%. However, most studies find concordance rates among
identical twins to be less than 50%, which suggests there is
more to schizophrenia than just genetics. This suggests an
interactionist approach is best for explaining schizophrenia.
● Multiple genes: It is unlikely that there is a single gene
responsible for schizophrenia. Instead, multiple genes likely
combine to increase a person’s risk of developing schizophrenia.
In a study of more than 36,000 schizophrenic patients, Ripke et
al (2014) found 108 different genetic variations that were
correlated with schizophrenia, supporting the existence of a
genetic component to the disorder. Further, many of these
genetic variations were related to dopamine transmission, which
provides support for the dopamine hypothesis.
● Methodological issues surrounding twin studies: Twin studies
typically assume that twins have identical upbringings and so
any differences in concordance rates between identical and
non-identical twins must be explained by genetics. However,
environmental factors likely play a role too. For example,
looking identical probably makes parents treat identical twins
more similarly than they would non-identical twins. As such,
greater similarities in environment could contribute to higher
concordance rates for schizophrenia among identical twins, with
the influence of genetics being exaggerated.
● The neural explanation of schizophrenia looks at correlations
among the brain structures of people with schizophrenia.
● People with schizophrenia have abnormally large ventricles in
the brain. Ventricles are fluid filled cavities (i.e. holes) in
the brain that supply nutrients and remove waste. This means
that the brains of schizophrenics are lighter than normal. The
ventricles of a person with schizophrenia are on average about
15% bigger than normal (Torrey, 2002).
● Reduced grey matter and cortical thinning: Boos et al (2012)
compared MRI scans of 155 schizophrenic patients, 186
non-schizophrenic family members, and 122 non-schizophrenic
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