Topic Summaries

Symptoms and co-morbidities

A-Level > Psychology > AQA > A-Level Psychology Topic Summaries > Schizophrenia > Symptoms and co-morbidities
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  • When describing symptoms, the terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ are used in the mathematical sense of ‘adding’ and ‘subtracting,’ not good/bad.
  • Positive symptoms: create a new behaviour (e.g. delusions and hallucinations).
  • Negative symptoms: loss of an experience (e.g. speech poverty or avolition).
  • Delusions: sets of belief with no basis on reality (e.g. believing that someone famous is stalking you).
  • Hallucinations: a distorted perception of reality and real stimuli (e.g. hallucinating the voices of dead loved ones).
  • Speech poverty: occurs when there’s an abnormally low level of frequency and quality of speech.
  • Avolition: sudden total loss of motivation and interest in self-initiated acts. It makes it harder to complete any regular, day-to-day tasks.
  • Co-morbidity: high frequency of a diagnosis of two disorders together. There is a high co-morbidity of schizophrenia and other mental health disorders such as OCD.
  • Cultural bias: research has shown that African-American men have a higher rate of schizophrenia diagnoses compared to the rates of white people. This could be attributed to cultural differences; for example, hearing voices would be viewed as a gift and a sign of increased connection to ancestors in African cultures. Additionally, psychiatrists may also have a racial bias against African-Americans, which increases the likelihood of false diagnosis.
  • Gender bias: women are less likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. This is because women are better at masking their symptoms of Schizophrenia, or may distort the severity in order to appear more agreeable. The current diagnostic system doesn’t account for this bias which increases the likelihood of an incorrect diagnosis.
  • Symptom overlap: many symptoms of other conditions overlap with symptoms of schizophrenia, making it more difficult to diagnose. This can lead to inaccurate and missed diagnosis.

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