Unit 4 - Psychopathology, Psychology in Action and Research Methods
Institution
AQA
This document provides questions and answers to different possible exam questions in the A level AQA Psychology exam for the Schizophrenia section of paper three. The questions range from 2 marks questions to the long 16 marks essay questions, all of which an answer is provided! From these 16 mark...
Unit 4 - Psychopathology, Psychology in Action and Research Methods
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1. Explain what is meant by the positive symptoms of schizophrenia (4 marks)
Atypical symptoms experienced in addition to normal experiences. They include
hallucinations and delusions.
Hallucinations: are unusual sensory experiences. Some hallucinations are related to events
in the environment whereas others have no relationship to what the senses are picking up
from the environment e.g. voices heard talking to sufferers, often criticising. Hallucinations
can be experienced in relation to any sense e.g. distorted facial expressions or people or
animals that are not there.
Delusions: paranoia - irrational beliefs. Common Delusions involve being an important
historical, political, religious figure. Delusions also involve being persecuted perhaps by the
government or aliens or having superpowers. Another class of delusions is the body -
sufferers may believe that they are under external control. Delusions in Schizophrenia make
sufferers behave in ways that make sense to them but bizarre others - can lead to
aggression.
2. Explain what is meant by the negative symptoms of schizophrenia (4 marks)
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia involve loss of usual abilities and experiences e.g.
avolution and speech poverty
Avolition: “apathy” can be described as finding it difficult to begin or keep up with goal-
directed activity. Sufferers of schizophrenia often have sharply reduced motivation to carry
out a range of activities e,g, poor hygiene and grooming, lack of persistence in work or
education and lack of energy
Speech poverty: schizophrenia is characterised by changes of patterns of speech. The
ICD-10 recognises speech poverty as a negative symptom because the emphasis is on the
reduction in the amount and quality of speech is schizophrenia - sometimes accompanied by
a delay in the sufferer’s verbal responses during conversation. Nowadays, the DSM system
places its emphasis on speech disorganisation in which speech becomes incoherent or the
speaker changes topic mid-sentence. This is classified in the DSM-5 as a positive symptom
of schizophrenia, whilst speech poverty remains as a negative symptom.
3. Explain the term avolition (2 marks)
A negative symptom of schizophrenia. It involves loss of motivation to carry out tasks and
results in lowered activity levels.
4. Explain the issues of culture bias and gender bias in the diagnosis of
schizophrenia (8 marks)
Current manuals to classify schizophrenia do not take into account the gender of patients
hence why men are more likely to be diagnosed as they are less able to cope with the
symptoms in contrast to women. Longnecker et al (2010) looked at studies on schizophrenia
and found out that men have been diagnosed more often than women. However female
patients with schizophrenia are able to function better than the men, being more likely to
maintain relations and have a good family life. This suggests that a woman's better
, interpersonal functioning could cause an underdiagnosis either because the symptoms are
merged all together or because the quality of the inter-functioning makes it seem too mild to
warrant a diagnosis.
African Americans are several times more likely than white people to be diagnosed with
schizophrenia. One possible explanation of this is that positive symptoms such as hearing
voices may be more acceptable in African cultures because of cultural beliefs in
communication with ancestors. Javier Escobar (2012) pointed out that (overwhelmingly
white) psychiatrists may tend to over-interpret symptoms and distrust honesty of black
people during diagnosis. The issue here in diagnosing schizophrenia is culture bias. This
suggests subjective bias puts into question the validity of diagnosis, therefore the
8classification of schizophrenia has poor validity. Therefore, there may not be an accurate
diagnosis – then treated for schz when they don’t have it? Leading to poor prognosis (poor
predictive validity)
5. Describe and evaluate the classification and diagnosis of schizophrenia (16
marks)
Both the DSM-5 and ICD-10 are used as diagnostic manuals to diagnose disorders such as
schizophrenia, the DSM-5 is used in America and the ICD-10 in europe. Despite being used
to do the same thing both slightly differ with their content and criteria when diagnosing. In the
DSM-5 a schizophrenia diagnosis can be made when someone displays symptoms for at
least 6 months whereas the ICD-10 only needs 1 month of positive symptoms to diagnose.
Furthermore, it is more difficult to fit the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-5 as you must display
two symptoms, whereas in the ICD you need at least one first rank symptoms such as
delusions and hallucinations. The ICD also focuses on the negative symptoms of patients
focusing on the aspect of thought disorders helping to find more hidden symptoms in
patients which may suggest a disorder.
Positive symptoms are atypical symptoms experienced in addition to normal experiences,
including hallucinations and delusions. Hallucinations are a sensory experience of stimuli
that have either no basis or are distorted perceptions of things that are there. Delusions
include beliefs that have no bias in reality or are distorted perceptions of things that are
there. Many schizophrenic people are usually victims of believing in conspiracies.
Negative symptoms are atypical experiences that represent a loss of normal experiences
taking away a characteristic a neurotypical human would normally portray. Avolition is a
negative symptom that involves the loss of motivation to carry out tasks in daily life. This
leads to a lower level of activity causing those with schizophrenia to underachieve due to the
lack of determinative motivation. Additionally, those who suffer with schizophrenia have
higher risks of speech poverty, which involves the reduced frequency and quality of speech.
Both diagnostic manuals can be seen as lacking reliability as it is not a universally approved
diagnostic criteria as you may have the same symptoms as another person however they
may not get diagnosed due to the criteria used where they are. In 1971 Copeland carried out
a study by giving 134 US and 194 British psychiatrists a description of a patient. 69% of the
US psychiatrists diagnose them as schizophrenia whereas only 2% of the British doctors did.
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