Schizophrenia Key Terms

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Classification:	The process of organising symptoms into categories based on which symptoms cluster/appear together in sufferers.
Positive symptoms:	Atypical symptoms that are experiences in addition to normal experiences. They include hallucinations and delusions.
Negative symptoms:	Atypical experiences/symptoms that represent the loss of normal/usual experience such as clear thinking or ‘normal’ levels of motivation.
Hallucinations:	A positive symptom – sensory experiences of stimuli that have either no basis in reality or are distorted perceptions of things that are there.
Delusions:	A positive symptom – they involve beliefs that have no basis in reality. E.g. the sufferer believes they are someone else or that they are the victim of a conspiracy.
Speech Poverty:	A negative symptom – involves reduced frequency and quality of speech.
Avolition:	A negative symptom – involves loss of motivation to carry out tasks and results in lowered activity levels.
Co-morbidity:	The occurrence of two illnesses or conditions together. E.g. a person may have schizophrenia and a personality disorder. Where two conditions are diagnosed together, it calls into question the validity of classifying the two disorders separately.
Symptom overlap:	This occurs when two or more conditions share symptoms. Where conditions share symptoms, this calls into question the validity of classifying the two disorders separately.
Validity:	The extent to which a diagnosis reflects the actual disorder.
Reliability:	The consistency of diagnosis across repeated measurements.
Genetics:	Genes consist of DNA strands. Each gene codes for physical features, such as the production of neurotransmitters and brain structures, which may impact on psychological features.
Dopamine:	A neurotransmitter that generally has an excitatory effect and is associated with the sensation of pleasure.
Glutamate	The most common neurotransmitter in the brain which is always excitatory. Glutamate contributes to prenatal and childhood brain development, but one of its most important roles as people mature is in learning and memory.
Neural correlates:	Patterns of structure or activity in the brain that occur in conjunction with an experience and may be implicated in the origins of that experience.
Hyperdopaminergia:	Abnormally high levels/activity of dopamine in the brain, likely to result in positive symptoms. E.g. delusions and hallucinations (due to the increased activity).
Hypodopaminergia:	Abnormally low levels/activity of dopamine in the brain, likely to result in the negative symptoms such as speech poverty/avolition due to decreased activity (which is likely to result in loss of experience).
Agonist:	A substance which initiates a physiological response when it binds with a receptor.
Antagonist:	A substance which interferes with or inhibits the physiological action of another substance. In this case, chemicals which reduce the action of a neurotransmitter.
Family dysfunction:	Abnormal processes within a family such as poor family communication, cold parenting and high levels of expressed emotion. These may be risk factors for the development and maintenance of schizophrenia.
Cognitive explanations:	Explanations that focus on mental processes such as thinking, language and attention.
Dysfunctional thought processing:	General term meaning information processing that is not functioning normally and produces undesirable consequences.
Metarepresentation:	Cognitive ability to reflect on thoughts and behaviour – having insight into our own goals and intentions and being able to interpret the actions of others.
Central control:	Cognitive ability to suppress automatic responses (e.g. thoughts) and perform deliberate actions.
Schizophrenogenic mother:	A cold, rejecting and controlling mother.
Double-bind theory:	Communication style whereby a person may say one thing but act in the opposite way which results in mixed messages.
Antipsychotics:	Drugs used to reduce the intensity of symptoms, in particular the positive symptoms of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.
Typical antipsychotics:	The first generation of antipsychotic drugs – used since the 1950s. They work as dopamine antagonists. Eg. CHLORPROMAZINE
Atypical antipsychotics:	Developed after typical antipsychotics – typically they target a range of neurotransmitters, including dopamine and serotonin. Eg. CLOZAPINE and RISPERIDONE
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy:	A therapy in which aims to modify thought processes in order to alter behavioural and emotional states.
Family Therapy:	A therapy which aims to alter and improve communication systems within families, thereby reducing stress.
Token Economies:	A method of behaviour modification that reinforces target behaviours by awarding tokens (secondary reinforcers), which can be exchanged for material goods or privileges (primary reinforcers).
Primary reinforcer:	Any reinforcer that does not need to be learned. It is biologically rooted, such as hunger, sleep, oxygen or sex. In the case of the token economy system, it is anything that has natural reinforcing properties.
Secondary reinforcer:	A reinforcer that has no natural properties of reinforcement but through association with a primary reinforcer, has become a reinforcer. It is learned or conditioned.
Interactionist Approach:	A broad approach to explaining schizophrenia which acknowledges a range of factors, including biological and psychological factors.
Diathesis-Stress Model:	An interactionist approach to explaining schizophrenia. An underlying vulnerability (diathesis) and a trigger (stress) are both necessary for the onset of schizophrenia.
Diathesis:	Underlying vulnerability (Originally believed to be just genetic, but now is understood to be either genetic or due to psychological trauma).
Stress:	A ‘trigger’ that is makes it more likely that a person who is vulnerable to developing the illness will actually develop it. Originally these ‘triggers’ were seen to be psychological only (eg stress of living with a schizophrenogenic mother) but now this is taken to include both biological and psychological stress.

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