Alice Alverio Professor John La Valle SOC 425 Week 10 Schizophrenia
Transcript
1. Schizophrenia So far, the causes of schizophrenia are not
fully clarified. The current scientific findings suggest that
schizophrenia is a multifactorial disease, which means that a large
number of variables come into play for the disease to occur
2. The prefrontal cortex controls many cognitive and emotional
functions, the kinds of functions often impaired in people with
schizophrenia. It is responsible for many higher- order or
executive-type functions, such as regulating attention, organizing
thoughts and behavior, prioritizing information, and formulating
goalsthe very types of deficits often found in people with
schizophrenia (Barch & Smith, 2008). Evidence shows that the
cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia, such as problems
with memory, learning, reasoning, and attention, often begin in
childhood in people who later go on to develop schizophrenia In the
Figure , we see a visual representation of the loss of brain tissue
in the brains of adolescents with early-onset (childhood)
schizophrenia. The most prominent sign of loss of brain tissue is
the presence of abnormally enlarged ventricles, which are hollow
spaces in the brain (see Figure 12.3) (Shenton et al., 2009)
(Nevid, Rathus and Greene).
3. Prodromal phase in schizophrenia, is the period of decline
in functioning that precedes the first acute psychotic episode.
Acute episode of schizophrenia are characterized by delusions,
hallucinations, illogical thinking, incoherent speech, and bizarre
behavior. Residual phase In schizophrenia, is the phase that
follows an acute phase, characterized by a return to the level of
functioning of the prodromal phase.
4. Gender Differences Men have a slightly higher risk of
developing schizophrenia than women and tend to develop the
disorder at an earlier age (NCA, 2005; Tandon, Keshavan, &
Nasrallah, 2008). The disorder typically begins in women between
age 25 and the mid-30s and in men between ages 18 and 25. Women
tend to have a higher level of functioning before the onset of the
disorder and to have a less severe course of illness than men. Men
with schizophrenia tend to have more cognitive impairment, greater
behavioral deficits, and a poorer response to drug therapy than
women with the disorder (Nevid, Rathus and Greene). People with
schizophrenia may experience auditory hallucinations as female or
male voices and as originating inside or outside their heads.
Hallucinatory is may hear voices con- versing about them in the
third person, debating their virtues or faults. Some voices are
experienced as supportive and friendly, but most are critical or
even terrorizing (Nevid, Rathus and Greene)..
5. Schizophrenia has been approached from each of the major
theoretical perspectives. Although the underlying causes of
schizophrenia remain elusive, they are presumed to involve brain
abnormalities in combination with psychological, social, and
environmental influences
6. High-risk children (children whose biological parents had
schizophrenia) were almost twice as likely to develop schizophre-
nia as those of nonschizophrenic biological parents, regardless of
whether they were reared by a parent with schizophrenia. It is also
notable that adoptees whose biological parents did not suffer from
schizophrenia were placed at no greater risk of developing
schizophrenia by being reared by an adoptive parent with
schizophrenia than by a non- schizophrenic parent. In sum, a
genetic relationship with a person with schizophrenia seems to be
the most prominent risk factor for developing the disorder. The
results strongly supported the genetic explanation. The incidence
of diagnosed schizophrenia was greater among biological relatives
of adoptees who had schizophrenia than among biological relatives
of control adoptees. Adoptive relatives of both the index cases and
control cases showed similar, low rates of schizophrenia. These
findings and others show that family linkages in schizophrenia
follow shared genes, not shared environments.
7. There is no cure for schizophrenia. Treatment is generally
multifaceted, incorporating pharmacological, psychological, and
rehabilitative approaches. Most people treated for schizophrenia in
organized mental health settings receive some form of antipsychotic
medication, which is intended to control symptoms such as
hallucinations and delusions and decrease the risk of recurrent
episodes. Antipsychotic drugs block dopamine receptors in the
brain, which reduces dopamine activity in the brain and helps quell
the more obvious symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions. The
effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs has been repeatedly
demonstrated in double-blind, placebo-controlled studies (Nevid,
Rathus and Greene).
8. Schizophrenia approachIn sum, no single treatment approach
meets all the needs of people with schizophrenia. The
conceptualization of schizophrenia as a lifelong disability
underscores the need for long-term treatment interventions that
incorporate antipsychotic medication, family therapy, supportive or
cognitive-behavioral forms of therapy, vocational training, and
housing and other social support services. To help the individual
reach maximal social adjustment, these interventions should be
coordinated and integrated within a comprehensive model of
treatment.
9. Alice Alverio Schizophrenia Works Cited Nevid, Jeffrey S.,
Spencer A. Rathus and Beverly Greene. Abnormal Psychology . n.d.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ9H19E02tE