Specialized Care for Schizophrenia & Psychosis Patients
Schizophrenia can cause significant disturbances across multiple areas of functioning, including cognition, perception, emotion, behavior, eye movement, and socialization.
Abnormalities lead to suspected impaired neuronal communication:
- Suspected alterations in chemical neuronal signal transmission
- Excess dopamine in mesolimbic pathway
- Decreased dopamine in the mesocortical pathway
- Excess glutamate
- Decreased gamma-ami
Schizophrenia is a multifactorial condition involving several neurobiological factors, including genetics, neurodevelopmental influences, and underlying neurobiological abnormalities.
Abnormalities lead to suspected impaired neuronal communication:
- Suspected alterations in chemical neuronal signal transmission
- Excess dopamine in mesolimbic pathway
- Decreased dopamine in the mesocortical pathway
- Excess glutamate
- Decreased gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)
- Decreased serotonin
Positive and Negative Symptom Categories in Schizophrenia
1
Positive Symptoms:
Hallucinations, delusions, referential thinking, disorganized behavior, hostility, grandiosity, mania, and suspiciousness. These symptoms represent excesses or distortions of normal brain function and typically respond well to antipsychotic medications. They are associated with increased dopamine activity in the mesolimbic pathway.
2
Negative Symptoms:
Affective flattening, alogia (poverty of speech), avolition, apathy, difficulties with abstract thinking, anhedonia, and attention deficits. These symptoms reflect a reduction or loss of normal functioning. They are generally less responsive to traditional antipsychotic medications but often improve with atypical antipsychotics. Negative symptoms are associated with decreased dopamine activity in the mesocortical pathway.
3
Associated Symptoms:
Associated Symptoms: Inappropriate affect, Dysphoric mood, Depersonalization, Derealization, High anxiety. These symptoms are not required to be present to diagnose the disorder but often are present and a focus of treatment.
SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDER
Schizoaffective disorder is an uninterrupted period of illness in which the person experiences psychotic symptoms like those seen in schizophrenia as well as mood symptoms like major depressive disorder (MDD) or bipolar (BP) disorder. The disorder may be a psychotic spectrum disorder, mood spectrum disorder, or both.
Symptoms of schizophrenia—two or more of the following frequently present during a 1-month period: Delusions, Hallucinations, Disorganized speech, grossly disorganized behavior. Presence of negative symptoms but usually less severe than those in schizophrenia
Symptoms of one or more of mood disorders: Major depressive episode, Manic episode, Mixed-mood episode, Presence of delusions or hallucinations for at least 2 weeks in the absence of prominent mood symptoms.
Two subtypes differentiated by type of mood-related symptoms:
- Depressive: When prominent mood symptoms are of the depressive type only
- Bipolar: When predominant mood symptoms are manic or mixed type
Brief Psychotic Disorder
- Disorder with sudden onset of psychotic symptoms lasting at least 1 day but less than a month.
- Age of onset in adolescence or early adulthood: Occurs more in younger clients (20 to 30 years of age).
- Positive-type psychotic symptoms: Delusions, Hallucinations, grossly disorganized behavior, disorganized speech.
- Can occur with or without an identified stressor.
- Person always returns to premorbid level of functioning
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