International Classification Of Diseases
In the International Classification of Diseases 8th revision there was a category “Other” in the schizophrenia section . “Other” includes: atypical forms of schizophrenia, infantile autism, schizophrenia, childhood type, NOS , schizophrenia of specified type not classifiable under 295.0295.7, schizophreniform attack or psychosis.
Unspecified psychoses with origin specific to childhood in the International Classification of Diseases 9th revision includes “child psychosis NOS”, “schizophrenia, childhood type NOS” and “schizophrenic syndrome of childhood NOS”.
“Childhood type schizophrenia” available in the Soviet adopted version of the ICD-9 and the Russian adopted version of the 10th revision ICD-10 and the U.S. adopted the 10th revision ICD-10 classified “schizophrenia, unspecified”.
How Doctors Treat Negative Symptoms
Schizophrenia means youll always need mental healthcare. Treatment is typically managed by a mental health professional such as a psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner.
Positive symptoms are treated with antipsychotic drugs. These medications can effectively address positive symptoms. Most have little effect on negative ones.
Negative symptoms can have a profound effect on quality of life. They can also affect your ability to live independently. In this respect, they may have greater impact than positive symptoms. Theyre also more difficult to treat.
Secondary negative symptoms may be easier to treat than primary ones.
Is Alogia A Positive Symptom Of Schizophrenia
Alogia is a negative symptom of schizophrenia. Its considered negative because it disables a person to do a particular thing or task.
The symptoms of schizophrenia are classified into positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms involve any change in thoughts or behaviors. This means that you can witness the patient having hallucinations and delusions.
On the other hand, when a patient has negative symptoms, they appear to take no interest in social interactions. Individuals who have negative symptoms often appear emotionless, and you can see them withdrawing from people.
There is some debate over whether alogia is a sign of schizophrenia. Some experts believe that it is, while others think that it may be present in some cases but is not always indicative of schizophrenia.
There are a few things to consider when trying to determine whether alogia is a sign of schizophrenia. The first is how severe the lack of speech is. If someone has only mild alogia, it may not be indicative of schizophrenia. On the other hand, if someone has significant difficulty communicating due to a lack of speech, that may be more indicative of schizophrenia.
Another thing to look at is whether the lack of speech is caused by a mental illness or if it is due to another factor. For example, someone who has a traumatic brain injury may have difficulty speaking due to the injury, but that would not be indicative of schizophrenia.
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Executive Attention And Schizophrenia
Executive functions have been related to executive attention. Attention is not a unitary system but a set of integrated processes involved in all levels of cognitive processing from sensory input to motor output . These different processes depend on three different yet closely related neural networks: alert, which underlies the ability to achieve and maintain a vigil and aware state, orientation to sensory events, which underlies the ability to select information from sensory inputs , and executive control of thoughts and feelings . Executive attention differs from EFs in that the latter encompasses different processes, whereas attention stresses the role of monitoring and resolving conflict among computations occurring in different brain areas, and can be measured with simple tests .
Disorders in EFs and executive attention are considered a central element of schizophrenia and may explain the negative symptoms of the disease .
Sleep Disturbance In Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a chronic psychotic disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized behavior, and negative symptoms such as affective flattening, alogia, and avolition.
The sleep of the schizophrenic is characterized by increased latency and increased wake time after sleep onset. The latter may be a sign of impending relapse of the psychosis. In a study of 145 patients with schizophrenia, patients who reported poor subjective sleep quality had lower perceived quality of life, more depressive symptoms, more psychological distress, and adverse events to medications. Some schizophrenics complain of total or near total insomnia although PSGs document objective sleep. The subjective perception of insomnia may be incorporated by schizophoenic patients into their delusional belief system.
Maurizio Coppola, … Rocco Luigi Picci, in, 2016
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What Are The Types Of Schizophrenia
There are different types of schizophrenia. The International Classification of Diseases manual describes them as below.
Paranoid schizophrenia
- Pranks, giggling and health complaints.
- Usually diagnosed in adolescents or young adults.
Catatonic schizophrenia
- Unusual movements, often switching between being very active and very still.
- You may not talk at all.
Simple schizophrenia
- Negative symptoms are prominent early and get worse quickly.
- Positive symptoms are rare.
Undifferentiated schizophrenia
Your diagnosis may have some signs of paranoid, hebephrenic or catatonic schizophrenia, but doesnt obviously fit into one of these types alone.
Residual schizophrenia
This type of schizophrenia is diagnosed in the later stages of schizophrenia. You may be diagnosed with this if you have a history of schizophrenia but only continue to experience negative symptoms.
Other schizophrenia
There are other types of schizophrenia according to the ICD-10, such as.
- Cenesthopathic schizophrenia. This is where people experience unusual bodily sensations.
- Schizophreniform. Schizophreniform disorder is a type of psychotic illness with symptoms similar to those of schizophrenia. But symptoms last for a short period.
Unspecified schizophrenia
Symptoms meet the general conditions for a diagnosis, but do not fit in to any of the above categories.
Linking Emotion And Cognition
One of the paradoxes that emerged from the findings on emotional experience in schizophrenia is a discrepancy between laboratory studies and clinical ratings. Specifically, many people with schizophrenia receive a clinical rating of anhedonia, indicating that they have diminished experience of positive emotion. Yet in the presence of emotionally pleasant things, such as films, pictures, tastes, or just day-to-day life, people with schizophrenia report experiencing as much pleasure as do people without schizophrenia. Drawing upon research on the reward system in humans and animals, argued for the importance of considering the temporal course of pleasure to distinguish anticipatory from in-the-moment pleasure. When people with schizophrenia are presented with pleasurable stimuli either in a lab or in daily life, they can and do derive pleasure from these experiences. However, evidence now supports the contention that people with schizophrenia appear less likely to anticipate that future events will be pleasurable, are less likely to experience pleasure in anticipation of things to come, and thus may be less likely to seek out pleasurable experiences . Other behavioral and fMRI studies also find that people with schizophrenia have difficulties in what we call anticipatory pleasure. This term encompasses both the anticipation of future pleasurable experiences as well as the experience of pleasure in anticipation of future events.
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Negative Symptoms Of Schizophrenia: Things That Might Stop Happening
Negative symptoms refer to an absence or lack of normal mental function involving thinking, behavior, and perception. You might notice:
- Lack of pleasure. The person may not seem to enjoy anything anymore. A doctor will call this anhedonia.
- Trouble with speech. They might not talk much or show any feelings. Doctors call this alogia.
- Flattening: The person with schizophrenia might seem like they have a terrible case of the blahs. When they talk, their voice can sound flat, like they have no emotions. They may not smile normally or show usual facial emotions in response to conversations or things happening around them. A doctor might call this affective flattening.
- Withdrawal. This might include no longer making plans with friends or becoming a hermit. Talking to the person can feel like pulling teeth: If you want an answer, you have to really work to pry it out of them. Doctors call this apathy.
- Struggling with the basics of daily life. They may stop bathing or taking care of themselves.
- No follow-through. People with schizophrenia have trouble staying on schedule or finishing what they start. Sometimes they can’t get started at all. A doctor might call this avolition.
Depression has some of the same symptoms, too. They can be hard to spot, especially in teens, because even healthy teens can have big emotional swings between highs and lows.
Schizophrenia: Early Warning Signs
Early detection and treatment of conditions such as heart disease and cancer have improved survival rates and quality of life for people who suffer from these conditions. A new approach involves identifying people who show minor symptoms of psychosis, such as unusual thought content, paranoia, odd communication, delusions, problems at school or work, and a decline in social functioningwhich are coined prodromal symptomsand following these individuals over time to determine which of them develop a psychotic disorder and which factors best predict such a disorder. A number of factors have been identified that predict a greater likelihood that prodromal individuals will develop a psychotic disorder: genetic risk , recent deterioration in functioning, high levels of unusual thought content, high levels of suspicion or paranoia, poor social functioning, and a history of substance abuse . Further research will enable a more accurate prediction of those at greatest risk for developing schizophrenia, and thus to whom early intervention efforts should be directed.
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What Is The Treatment For Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is treated with medications combined with counseling and support.
Antipsychotics are the primary type of medication used to treat schizophrenia, and patients usually have to take these drugs for the rest of their lives. Antipsychotics often cause uncomfortable side effects and as a result, many patients stop taking them. Never stop taking a prescribed medication without first talking to your doctor. It may be possible to change the dosage or regimen, or switch to a different medication to find one that works best for you and also minimize side effects. It often takes several attempts with different medications to find the right one for each individual patient.
Counseling and other support for schizophrenia includes:
- Cognitive behavioral therapy
- Cognitive remediation interventions to help address the negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia
- Supported employment
- Behavioral skills training
- Family education and support programs
- Coordinated specialty care , which is recovery-oriented treatment programs for people with first episode psychosis, an early stage of schizophrenia
- Assertive Community Treatment for individuals with schizophrenia who are at risk for repeated hospitalizations or homelessness
Connectionist Model Of Schizophrenia
As mentioned, neuropsychological studies have shown that the more consistent and pronounced deficits of schizophrenia concern EFs, memory, and attention, which are present from the onset of the disease and perhaps in prodromal stages. Disorders in cognitive domains related to regions in direct connection with the PFC have also been described. These regions include the basal ganglia, thalamus, medial temporal lobe, and parietal lobe. It has been proposed that the deficits observed in schizophrenia may be secondary to alterations in connectivity of the cortico-subcortical or corticocortical neural networks . Thus, schizophrenia has been conceptualized as a disorder of neural connectivity involving prefronto-striato-thalamic, prefronto-temporal, prefronto-thalamo-cerebellar, and prefronto-parietal neural networks, and disconnection of these neural networks may explain schizophrenia symptoms, cognitive deficits, and neuroimaging findings . One hypothesis that attempts to unify the available evidence suggests that schizophrenia may be a disorder of the cognitive networks that involve the heteromodal association cortex, which consists of the DLPFC, superior temporal cortex, and inferior parietal cortex. These cortices are interconnected and have extensive connections with limbic and subcortical structures .
Schizophrenia as a disruption of the fronto-striato-thalamic system
Schizophrenia as a disruption of the frontotemporal system
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What Are The Symptoms Of Schizophrenia And How Is It Diagnosed
How is schizophrenia diagnosed?
Only a psychiatrist can diagnose you with schizophrenia after a full psychiatric assessment. You may have to see the psychiatrist a few times before they diagnose you. This is because they need to see how often you are experiencing symptoms.
There are currently no blood tests or scans that can prove if you have schizophrenia. So, psychiatrists use manuals to diagnose schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.
The 2 main manuals used by medical professionals are the:
- International Classification of Diseases which is produced by the World Health Organisation , or
- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual which is produced by the American Psychiatric Association .
NHS doctors use the ICD-10.
The manuals explain which symptoms should be present, and for how long for you to receive a diagnosis. For example, according to the NHS you need to be hearing voices for at least 1 month before you can be diagnosed. Mental health professionals may say you have psychosis before they diagnose you with schizophrenia.
What is the future of diagnosis in schizophrenia?There are many research studies being conducted across the world on how to better diagnose schizophrenia. For example, a recent study found through looking at images of the brain, there may be different sub-types of schizophrenia.
What are the symptoms of schizophrenia?
The symptoms of schizophrenia are commonly described as positive symptoms or negative symptoms. This doesnt mean that they are good or bad.
Neurocognitive Models Of Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia presents a challenge to the development of cognitive models because of the extent and diversity of its symptoms that include almost all cognitive domains: perception , inferential thinking , fluency of thought and speech , clarity and organization of thought and language , motor activity , emotional expression , ability to initiate and complete goal-oriented behavior , and ability to search for and experience emotional gratification . Not all of these symptoms are found in a single patient and none is pathognomonic of the disease. An initial examination of the variety of symptoms may suggest that multiple brain regions are involved. Therefore, in the absence of recognizable brain lesions and known specific pathogens, researchers have explored models that may explain the diversity of symptoms with a single cognitive mechanism. Models can be divided into two groups: neuroanatomical models postulating that the disorders of EFs in schizophrenia are due to the dysfunction of certain brain circuits and regions, and cognitive models postulating that certain cognitive disorders account for the symptomatology of schizophrenia. We will review some of these models.
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Negative Symptoms Of Schizophrenia: Understanding Them
What are Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia?
Nowadays we tend to think of schizophrenia as having two types of symptoms that we call positive and negative. The concept of positive and negative symptoms of mental health has been around for a long time but was first applied to schizophrenia in the 1970s.
The positive symptoms are so called because they are thinking or behaviour that the person with schizophrenia did not have before they became ill and so can be thought of as being added to their psyche. Positive symptoms include hallucinations such as hearing voices and delusions such as paranoid thoughts.1
Negative symptoms are so called because they describe thoughts or behaviour that the person used to have before they became ill but now no longer have or have to a lesser extent and so have been lost or taken away from their psyche. It describes normal aspects of the persons behaviour that they no longer have. Negative symptoms can include lethargy and apathy.1
In the past different terminology has been used. People experiencing prominently positive symptoms were described as acute or having Type 1 schizophrenia whilst those experiencing negative symptoms were thought of as having chronic or Type 2 schizophrenia.2 Nowadays the terms positive and negative tend to be used more.
There are eight principal negative symptoms. These are 3,4,5:
1. Apathy
2. Absent, blunted or incongruous emotional responses
3. Reductions in speech
4. Social withdrawal
5. Impaired attention
What Causes Schizophrenia
It is not entirely understood what causes schizophrenia but it is thought to be due to a combination of factors:
- Genetics
- Schizophrenia may run in families
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Risks Of Having Alogia
Though Alogia may seem like a harmless trait, there are several risks associated with having this personality characteristic.
Below are reasons that answer the question of why having alogia can be detrimental to your life and relationships.
Psychotic Disorders: The Schizophrenia Spectrum And Other Thinking Disorders
Thinking disorders are a disorganized manner in thoughts displayed in abnormal language, speech, and writing. They are considered weird mental disorders because they are illogical, and most lack understanding of them.
There are three aspects to thinking: thinking about a topic, putting thoughts together about the topic, and speaking about those thoughts logically. A physician will diagnose thinking disorders when thoughts, behavior, or speaking become problematic, illogical, or incoherent.
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