Lesson 1 

Introduction to Schizophrenia. We are revisiting concepts first encountered during the Psychopathology Unit. It is a good idea to find your notes from year 12 as this is a good time to revise this unit.

You should already be familiar with the different ways of defining mental illness. These are, deviation from the social norm, statistical infrequency, deviation from ideal mental health and failure to function adequately.

Psychiatrists also refer to classification manuals to help diagnose different types of psychological impairments. The two we need to know are ICD (Europian) and DSM (USA). Both are revised regularly. Both are getting bigger all the time.  The current ICD is version 10. Here is the current  DSM for you to have a look at >>> DSM V  Each classifies psychiatric conditions slightly differently from each other. This makes classification difficult as there will be issues with the reliability of diagnoses as well as the validity of diagnoses. 

It is essential that you take some time to revisit your understanding of the meaning of these 2 key terms. You will also need to familiarize yourself with different types of reliability and validity. See p 48-49 PHG Revision Guide for a quick recap.

Tutor2U have some fantastic material for you to look at >>>>>>>

https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/what-is-schizophrenia

Lesson 2 and 3  – We continued to work our way through the power-point which I emailed you. We learnt about the different sub-types of Sz, as well as differences in how Sz is classified in DCM and ICD. We also focused on the terminology used to describe the positive and negative symptoms of the Sz. I hope that by the end of these lessons you have a better understanding of how devastating this mental illness can be for the sufferer and their families. Treatments have massively improved and far fewer people suffer the indignity we saw in the old film footage we watched.

Reminder – Forensic Assessment tomorrow 🙂 

Lesson 4-5.   Only 3 students in the lesson today. We spent our time revising Social Influence using the specification as our guide and the GHG revision guide as the source of information. We will do the forensic assessment next week. I hope you all feel better soon.

Prep

Watch the Gerald clip again – (PHG digital book or Power point) Complete exercise 8.3 in your PHG Sz pack for tomorrow.

Please complete the reliability and validity work sheet for next Monday.

As always make sure you are doing enough preparatory and consolidation reading.  Read ahead in the PHG. Do the quizzes and try the Apply it questions. We have only got a few weeks left. Everything you do now will make a massive difference to your final grade.

In preparation for next week please read ahead. We will be examining the Biological explanation for Sz together with the biological treatment.

Look at this short power point to remind you about twin studies

The starter activity on Monday will require that you have some knowledge of twin studies.

Additionally we will be looking at Rosenhan’s classic participant observation study that took place in real psychiatric hospitals – it is one of the most fascinating studies ever. See here >>> original rosenhan

 

“Reliability is the extent to which a finding is consistent. It is the extent to which psychiatrists can agree on the same diagnosis when independently assessing patients (inter-rater reliability). In order for a classification system to be reliable, the same diagnosis should be made each time. Therefore different psychiatrists should reach the same decision when assessing a patient.

Validity is the extent to which we are measuring what we are intending to measure. In the case of an illness like schizophrenia we have to consider the validity of the diagnostic tools; for example, do different assessment systems arrive at the same diagnosis for the same patient? ”   Source Joseph Sparks – Tutor2U