Schizophrenia - AP Psychology

Men tend to develop schizophrenia earlier than women, in that the average age of onset of schizophrenia for men is 18 and the average age of onset for women is 25. Many other psychological disorders come to fruition during the "young adult" period, including antisocial personality disorder and various mood disorders.

Many people afflicted with schizophrenia report having hallucinations (hearing voices in one's head) and/or delusions (erroneous beliefs about being persecuted) while having a schizophrenic episode. Hallucinations and delusions are significantly less common in depressed, ADHD, CD, and selective mutism patients.

The main tenet of the neurodevelopmental hypothesis is that schizophrenia is the result of early brain insult during either pre- or perinatal development, which is later expressed in the mature brain. Many have suspected that this insult could be due to environmental factors that mothers endure or are exposed to, as evidenced by the many schizophrenic children born from starving mothers during World War II, or from mothers exposed to toxins. The insult could also be due to genetic inheritance.

People with schizophrenia perceive things without a stimulation, which are termed hallucinations. These people also suffer delusions, which are mistaken beliefs that are contrary to facts. Their speech is disorganized and can be incoherent.

In obsessive-compulsive disorders, people have obsessions, which are recurrent thoughts, and compulsions, which are recurrent, irrestible actions. People who experience episodes of depression with mania are considered to have bipolar disorder. Antisocial personality disorder describes people who lie, cheat, and steal, and have no sense of responsibility and no guilt about their behavior. Post-traumatic stress disorder occurs when a person who has gone through a significant trauma shows stress symptoms that impair the person's ability to function.

Mania (a period of especially high activity and euphoria) is not directly associated with schizophrenia; it is commonly associated with bipolar disorder. The other answer choices are four of the most common symptoms of schizophrenia.

A delusion of persecution is when a person believes everyone is trying to hurt (persecute) him or her; Lucy's belief about random planes bombing her and strangers plotting to hurt her are two examples of such perceived persecution.

Positive symptoms are the presence of emotions or behaviors that are usually absent in a healthy patient. Negative symptoms are the absence of emotions or behaviors that are usually present in a healthy patient.

Flat affect is a negative symptom of schizophrenia, since it is a disruption in normal emotional functioning. Delusions, hallucinations, and catatonia are examples of positive symptoms, whereas impaired executive functioning is an example of a cognitive symptom.

While hallucinations, delusions, and incoherent speech are all noted symptoms of schizophrenia- new feelings or behaviors not present in healthy people-, flat affect (a lack of emotional expression and decrease in talkativeness) is a noted negative symptom, something that healthy people have/do that schizophrenia sufferers do not.

The causes of schizophrenia are varied but one of the leading suspected factors is an excess of the chemical dopamine.

A negative symptom is a symptom that represents something that the sufferer does not have but is regularly found in unaffected people. In the case of a schizophrenic, he or she may not display any emotion where an unaffected person would. This is known as a "flat effect.”

There are four types of schizophrenia, one of them being paranoid schizophrenia. The identifying and differentiating symptom of paranoid schizophrenia is the delusion that someone or something is “out to get” the person with the disorder.

A positive symptom is something that is present in the affected person that is not normally found in unaffected persons. Essentially, it's not positive in the sense of "good" but of something being added. One out of several positive symptoms of schizophrenia is the presence of delusional thinking, where one thinks there are things that are present that actually are not.

A schizophrenic is susceptible to certain kinds of delusions—namely those of grandeur, reference, and persecution. Delusions of grandeur lead the schizophrenic to believe they are greater than they are such as thinking they are a prophet or a god. Those of reference may lead them to believe secret messages are being sent to them and they must decode them. Those of persecution incite the paranoid belief that people are out to get them.

A positive symptom is a gained behavior, while a negative symptom is a loss of normal function. The gained paranoia behaviors are therefore 'positive.'

Schizophrenia is marked by several unique brain traits, including:

Enlarged ventricles

Small/disorganized hippocampus

Small amygdala

The absence of a cerebellum would result in serious motor function deficits, but is absolutely not characteristic of the brains of patients with schizophrenia.

Many people with schizophrenia have hallucinations, which can be defined as sensory experiences without sensory stimulation. Although auditory, visual, tactile (touch), gustatory (taste), and olfactory (smell) hallucinations are all possible, auditory hallucinations, particularly hearing voices that no one else can hear, are by far the most common.

Schizophrenia has positive symptoms (characteristics that do not exist in neurotypical people) and negative symptoms (the lack of something that neurotypical people have). Therefore, hallucinations or delusions are a positive symptom, whereas flat affect (lack of facial expressions), apathy (lack of passion), avolition (lack of motivation), and monotone speech (lack of tone variance in speech) are all negative symptoms.

Positive symptoms are characteristics that are in excess or beyond typical experience. Hallucinations and delusions are not typically experienced in daily life, while depression is a decreased ability to feel pleasure and asociality is defined as a decrease in social integration.

Catatonia in individuals with schizophrenia causes limited reactivity to the environment and can include stereotyped behaviors such as repetitive movements or assuming bizarre poses for hours or even days.