Classification of schizophrenia

Positive symptoms are additional like delusions and hallucinations (auditory and visual).

Negative symptoms are a lack of something, for example, avolition( lack of motivation), speech poverty and lack of emotion

CO-MOBILITY

Co-morbidity is the presence of one or more disorders occurring at the same time. With association with schizophrenia, it is often depression and PTSD.

This effects descriptive validity as schizophrenia may not be a disorder in its own right but may be a combination of disorders occurring at the same time.

Co-morbidity as effects reliability as psychiatrists might focus on different disorders causing a different diagnosis depending on who you see. 

Buckley found that the following people with schizophrenia also had:

• 50% had depression
• 15% had panic disorder
• 29% had PTSD
• 23% had OCD
• 47% had substance abuse

Jeste found that people with Co-morbidity are left out of research. therefore research cannot be generalised to a majority of the schizophrenia population.

CULTURAL BIAS

There are high cultural biases in diagnosing schizophrenia. different cultures overdiagnosis of different cultures. In some cultures is if seen as a gift to hear voices but in the western cultures it would be a sign of schizophrenia.

British psychiatrists are more likely to diagnose people with Afro-Caribean decent and they are immediately sectioned. Cochrane found the prevalence for schizophrenia in Britain is 1% however this is 7x higher for Afro-Caribean people diagnosed in Britain.

On the other hand, there could be a general link between culture and schizophrenia as they often have to deal with high levels of poverty and racism which all cause stress. stress has directly been linked to schizophrenia.

GENDER BIAS

There is also a gender bias. Around 50% more sufferers are men than women. However, the Criteria was based on male studies, therefore, we must question if the criteria are better at diagnosis men than women affecting the validity. This is supported by Lewin saying when the criteria were clearer women were diagnosed less.

Men have more negative symptoms. Haro found that men had higher relapse rates and women had higher recovery rates. This suggests that gender bias is not important in the diagnosis of schizophrenia only the treatment of it.

The onset…