Transcript Abnormal Psychology - McGraw Hill Higher Education

Introductory Psychology Concepts
Schizophrenia
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Introductory Psychology Concepts: Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia:
A Split Between Thoughts, Emotions, and Behavior
• Psychiatric mental illness characterized by
impairments in the perception or expression of reality,
which results in significant social or occupational
dysfunction.
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Introductory Psychology Concepts: Schizophrenia
Main Symptoms of Schizophrenia
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Delusions
Attention Difficulties
Hallucinations
Disturbed Speech
Emotional Disturbances
Disordered Thinking
Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia
are tormented by bizarre and intrusive
thoughts and images.
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Introductory Psychology Concepts: Schizophrenia
Types of Schizophrenia
Disorganized (hebephrenic) schizophrenia
Inappropriate laughter and giggling, silliness, incoherent speech,
infantile behavior, strange and sometimes obscene behavior.
Paranoid schizophrenia
Delusions and hallucinations of persecution or of greatness, loss
of judgment, erratic and unpredictable behavior.
Catatonic schizophrenia
Major disturbances in movement; in some phases, loss of all
motion, patient frozen into a single position, remaining that way
for hours or days; in other phases, hyperactivity and wild, violent
movement.
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Introductory Psychology Concepts: Schizophrenia
Types of Schizophrenia (continued)
Undifferentiated schizophrenia
Variable mixture of major symptoms of schizophrenia;
classification used for patients who cannot be typed into any of
the more-specific categories.
Residual schizophrenia
Minor signs of schizophrenia after a more-serious episode.
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Introductory Psychology Concepts: Schizophrenia
Possible Causes of Schizophrenia
Psychoanalytic:
Suggests that schizophrenia is a form of regression to earlier
experiences and stages of life.
• Freud: people with schizophrenia lack egos strong enough to
cope with unacceptable impulses.
Behavioral:
Suggests that the disorder is created through learned classical
conditioning, observational learning, or operant conditioning.
Cognitive:
Suggests that schizophrenia results from overattention to stimuli
in the environment.
• People with the disorder may be receptive to everything in their
environment, unable to screen out unimportant stimuli.
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Introductory Psychology Concepts: Schizophrenia
Possible Causes of Schizophrenia (continued)
Brain Abnormalities:
Brain scans have indicated a number of structural abnormalities
in the brains of schizophrenic patients.
Nonschizophrenic brain
Schizophrenic brain
ventricles
One difference between the brains of a person with schizophrenia and without is
enlarged ventricles (butterfly-shaped spaces seen in the middle of the MRIs).
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Introductory Psychology Concepts: Schizophrenia
Possible Causes of Schizophrenia (continued)
Biological hypothesis:
The brains of people with schizophrenia may harbor either a
biochemical imbalance or a structural abnormality.
• The dopamine hypothesis suggests that schizophrenia occurs
when there is excess activity in the areas of the brain that use
dopamine as a neurotransmitter.
• Drugs that block dopamine action in brain pathways can be
highly effective in reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia.
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Introductory Psychology Concepts: Schizophrenia
Possible Causes of Schizophrenia (continued)
Genetic:
Strong evidence exists for a genetic predisposition to
schizophrenia.
• Specific genes and their roles in creating the disposition are
unknown.
• Twin studies show that identical twins have higher concordance
rates than fraternal twins.
• Adoption studies show much higher concordance with biological
parents than with adoptive parents.
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Introductory Psychology Concepts: Schizophrenia
Genes and schizophrenia
The degree of risk for developing schizophrenia correlates highly with
the degree of genetic relationship with someone who has that disorder.
Relationship
Genetic
relatedness
Unrelated person in the
general population
0%
Nephew/niece
25%
Sibling
50%
Offspring of 1 schizophrenic
patient
50%
Fraternal twin
50%
Offspring of 2 schizophrenic
patients
50% with
each parent
Identical twin
100%
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Lifetime risk
20 30 40 50
1%
3%
10%
13%
17%
Data summarizes results of 40 concordance studies conducted in many countries.
SOURCE: Based on Gottesman, 1991
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46%
48%
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