Classification and Diagnosis of Schizophrenia

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Classification and Diagnosis of Schizophrenia 3) Use this material to write a 600 word answer (in total) to the following two part question: (a) Outline clinical characteristics of schizophrenia (b) Explain issues of reliability and validity associated with the classification and diagnosis of schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder; it is a complex illness affecting a person's whole being, their moods, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, behaviour and ability to communicate. It has been described as a disintegration of the personality and a split between thinking and emotion. It involves a range of psychotic symptoms such as delusions which are thought disturbances that include false beliefs and of which are three types, delusions of grandeur, paranoid delusions and delusions of reference; hallucinations which is false perceptual disturbances that do not really exist, which can occur as auditory in where a person hears voices or visual in which a person will see something or someone that is not really there; Disorganised speech (e.g. frequent derailment or incoherence), which is the inability to concentrate for a period of time, or the inability of sort thoughts into logical sequences, their speech may be difficult to understand or interpret and follow. Schizophrenia is diagnosed using the DSM-IV, if a patient shows two or more clinical characteristics symptoms of schizophrenia such as delusions, hallucinations, negative symptoms etc. for significant period of time during a one month period then they will be diagnosed as schizophrenic, however evidence shows this is not always a reliable way of diagnosing schizophrenia. Diagnosis of schizophrenia has been found to be unreliable based on cultural differences which are not taken into account, in some cultures hearing voices or having hallucinations are seen as normal and are sometimes often

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