PSYA 4: Classification and Diagnosis of Schizophrenia

It is a disruption of cognition and emotion. It can affect a person's language, thoughts, perception and their sense of self.

These appear to reflect a distortion of a person's normal functioning.

• Delusions
• Experiences of control
• Halluncinations
• Disorder Thinking and Behaviours

These appear to reflect a loss of normal functioning

• Affective Flattening - decrease in emotion, eye contact and body language
• Alogia - speech
• Avolition - lack of drive

This is to the extent to which psychitrists can agree on the same diagnoses.

• Rosenhan (1973) Sane in Insane Places - People admitted to hospital and diagnosed with schizophrenia even though there was nothing wrong with them.
• Whaley (2001) - Inter-rater reliability (whether two psychiatrists agree) correlations only 0.11

The extent to which what we see as being schizophrenia actually is schiophrenia.

• Schneider (1959) - He came up with the "First rank symptoms" which would help distinguish schizophrenia from other disorders. However some of the "First rank symptoms" are still found in other disorders such as depression and bipolar.
• Ellan and Ross (1995) - They found that people with dissociative identity disorder (DID) experience more schizophrenic symptoms than those actually suffering from schizophrenia.

Cultural Differences - There are major differences in the diagnosis of schizophrenia depending on the country you live in.

• Copeland (1971) - He gave a description of a patient to 134 US and 194 UK psychiatirsts. 69% of the US psychiatrists diagnosed them with schizophrenia, but only 2% of the UK psychiatrist diagnosed the patient with schizophrenia.