Schizophrenia

Types: 

Simple: Gradual withdrawal from society and reality.

Paranoid: When people have delusional thoughts and hallcuinations, May live in a complete fantsasy world.

Catatonic: Disturbances to their mototr activity, can involve the suffer being sat in strange postures for hours.

Disorganised: When suffers has dellusional/incoherent thoughts, behaviours and speech patterns.

Undifferentitated: When suffers has schizophrenic symtpoms but do not fit into any of the above categories.  

Characteristics (DSM): 

Must experience two of the following for at least a month: Delusions, hallunicinations, disorganised speech or behaviour, flattening of emotions or continual comentary. 

Must show social/occupational functioing that has declined.

No evidence that it is a result of medical factors.

Symptoms:

Positive refers to the additional features such as: Hallucinations, delusions, incoherent speech and behaviour.

Negative refers to the removal of features such as: Diminished emotional response, lack of will and lacking in social functions.

Explanations for Schizophrenia:Genetic:  Gottesman and shields used concordance rates to show the genetic link to SZ. For MZ twins he found a rate of 48% and for DZ twins 17%. Identical twins have the same DNA and therefore are used because they will have the same genetic make up, indicating a link between genes and SZ.  The use of Genes is very scientifc and therefore easier to generalise from due to the reliablity and validty. It also has supporting evidence that is scientififc and  objective which means it is not open to bias and can be widley accepted. This said concordance rates are never 100% meaning their must be another factor biologist are ignoring (reductionist). The use of identical twins also means that it could be due to enviromental factors as they will be raised and treated the same. 

Biomedical: The Dopamine hypothesis suggests that an excess amount of dopamine in the limbic pathway (pleasure center) causes SZ. Drug treatment for parkinson suffers that attempt to lower dopmine levels resulted…