Psy 270 Individual Schizophrenia Presentation

Schizophrenia Rhonda Sandberg April 24, 2011 PSY/270 Gavin Coriell IntroductionSchizophrenia is a psychotic disorder in which personal, social, and occupational functioning deteriorate as a result of strange perceptions, disturbed thought processes, unusual emotions, and motor abnormalities.Psychosis is a state in which a person loses contact with reality in key ways. Symptoms of schizophreniaPositive symptoms are “pathological excesses” of bizarre additions, to a person’s behavior. Delusions, disorganized thinking and speech, heightened perceptions and hallucinations, and inappropriate affect are the ones most often found in schizophrenia.Many people with schizophrenia develop delusions, ideas that they believe wholeheartedly but that have no basis in fact. Some hold a single delusion that dominates their lives and behavior, and some may have many delusions.Delusions of persecution are the most common in schizophrenia (APA, 2000). People with such delusions believe that they are being plotted against or discriminated against, spied on, slandered, threatened, attacked, or deliberately victimized.There is also delusions of grandeur in which people with schizophrenia believe that they are great inventors, religious saviors, or other specially empowered people. Diagnosing schizophreniaDSM-IV identifies fives types of schizophrenia:DisorganizedCatatonicParanoidUndifferentiatedResidualType I Schizophrenia is a type of schizophrenia characterized mainly by positive symptoms, such as delusions, hallucinations, and certain formal thought