Psychotic Disorders
Schizophrenia-
• the startling disorder characterized by a broad spectrum of cognitive and emotional
dysfunctions including delusions and hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior, and
inappropriate emotions.
• Schizophrenia is a complex syndrome that inevitably has a devastating effect on the lives of the
person affected and on family members. This disorder can disrupt a person’s perception,
thought, speech, and movement: almost every aspect of daily functioning. Society often
devalues these individuals. People with these severe mental health problems are more likely to
be stigmatized and discriminated against than those without schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia affects one’s ability to express oneself clearly,To have close social relationships,
to express positive emotions and to plan for their future.
• The most common set of symptoms seen in individuals with schizophrenia with the past 100
years is a belief that others are out to get them and the hearing of voices that others do not
hear.
• Individuals schizophrenia can display problems in terms of cognitive process, emotion processes
and motor processes. Cognitive problems can be seen as a disorganization of thinking and
behavior.
• the end of the 19th century, the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1899) built on the writings
of Haslam, Pinel, and Morel (among others) to give us what stands today as the most enduring
description and categorization of schizophrenia.
• Two of Kraepelin’s accomplishments are especially important. First, he combined several
symptoms of insanity that had usually been viewed as reflecting separate and distinct disorders:
catatonia (alternating immobility and excited agitation), hebephrenia (silly and immature
emotionality), and paranoia (delusions of grandeur or persecution). Kraepelin thought these
symptoms shared similar underlying features and included them under the Latin term dementia
praecox. Although the clinical manifestation might differ from person to person, Kraepelin
believed an early onset at the heart of each disorder develops into “mental weakness.”
• Kraeplin suggested there were four subtypes of dementia praecox. The first was the simple type
which was characterized by a slow decline along with social withdrawal and apathy. The second
was paranoid characterized by persecution.The third was hebephrenic characterized by mania
like presentation. The fourth was catatonia – lack of movement.
• In a second important contribution, Kraepelin (1898) distinguished dementia praecox from
manic-depressive illness (now called bipolar disorder). For people with dementia praecox, an
early age of onset and a poor outcome were characteristic; in contrast, these patterns were not
essential to manic depression, Kraepelin also noted the numerous symptoms in people with
dementia praecox, including hallucinations, delusions, negativism, and stereotyped behavior.
• A second major figure in the history of schizophrenia was Kraepelin’s contemporary, Eugen
Bleuler (1908), a Swiss psychiatrist who introduced the term schizophrenia. Schizophrenia,
which comes from the combination of the Greek words for “split” (skhizein) and “mind” (phren),
reflected Bleuler’s belief that underlying all the unusual behaviors shown by people with this
disorder was an associative splitting of the basic functions of personality. This concept
