Risk assessments are also designed to manage and identify areas of concern, either to the patient or health professional’s involved in the care of the patient. Areas of risk assessment may include suicide or self harm, absconding, aggression or violence, substance use, vulnerabilities and neglect, non adherence or compliance. These areas of assessment may include past risk and current risk factors (Edward, Munro, Robins & Welch, 2011). Risk assessment of the patient is important but also risk towards others. Patients with paranoid schizophrenia are more opportunistic in behaving aggressively or violently towards co-patients and/or staff, which is why implementation of such assessment tools have been put in place (Langan, 2008).
Schizophrenia can be managed, but it requires the assistance of medication and possibly other therapies. The wishful thinking of Elizabeth A. Richter in the thought that a person with schizophrenia can cure themselves is just a dream. The reality for people with schizophrenia is a lifestyle change that requires managing a disease with the aid of medication and therapies. Often times when a person with schizophrenia chooses to go off of medication they fall back into the world of delusions and faltered reality. This can cause upheaval and damage relationships within their life.
Know the impact of mental ill health on individuals and others in their social network. Unit CMH 302 Understand Mental Health Problems Outcome 1 Know the main forms of mental ill health Assessment Criteria The learner can: 1. Describe the main types of mental ill health according to the psychiatric (DSM/ICD) classification system: mood disorders, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders, substance-related disorders, eating disorders, cognitive disorders. 2. Explain the key strengths and limitations of the psychiatric classification system.
For example, one psychologist may use descriptive psychopathology to which will strive to provide answers for symptoms or mental illness. Either way, psychopathology is formally used to study mental illness or the distresses which may be affecting an individual. The issues of the abnormal psychology will assist in the study by the way we would use it in the attempt to capture interest, trigger concerns, and demands our attention. It also brings us to form and ask certain questions pertaining to any study. Psychopathology is not the same as psychopathy, which has to do with antisocial
Unfamiliar is not the same as abnormal, distinction between these two is vital to understanding psychopathology and those affected by mental illness. As abnormal psychology evolves and progresses in treatments, therapies, and research the central theme of the six core concepts continues to guide researcher. These six concepts define and provide understanding of abnormality. The concepts also illustrate the range between normal and abnormal behavior of individuals experiencing personality disorders. Another concept is studying cultural and historical relativism in defining and classifying abnormality in relation to environment.
This mental disorder makes it difficult to differentiate between what is reality and what is fantasy. The symptoms of schizophrenia are divided into positive and negative symptoms. An individual must display at least two positive symptoms or one positive symptom as well as a negative symptom. Positive symptoms are symptoms that are only present in people with schizophrenia and atypical to the average person, such as hallucinations. Negative symptoms include deficits of standard emotional responses, such as lack of motivation or inability to experience pleasure.
In 1968, the American Psychiatric Association defined schizophrenia as: "a psychosis characterized chiefly by a slow and insidious reduction of external attachments and interests and by apathy and indifference leading to impoverishment of interpersonal relations, mental deterioration, and adjustment on a lower level of functionary. In general, the condition is less dramatically psychotic than the hebephrenic, catatonic, and paranoid types of schizophrenia; also, it contrasts with schizoid personality in which there is little or no progression of the disorder. (A.P.A.,
Provide an overview of the disorder, its symptoms, prevalence and treatment. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Provide an overview of the disorder. Discuss treatments sources and effectiveness. Bipolar Disorder Provide an overview of the disorder, treatment options and their effectiveness Conduct Disorder: The Cognitive/Behavioral Approach of Alan E.
(Mental Health America) The biological factor responsible is yet unknown, however scientists believe the illness has a biological cause involving some type of disturbance in the brain. (Mueser, Jeste, V., 2008) This idea is based on the most widely accepted biological theory known as Dopamine Hypothesis. An imbalance in the neurotransmitter dopamine is believed to exist in schizophrenia. Dopamine is known to be an important neurotransmitter that controls thoughts and feelings, both of which are disturbed in schizophrenia. The imbalance of these chemicals affects the way a person’s brain responds to stimuli, which would explain why a person with schizophrenia might be overwhelmed by sensory information (loud music or bright lights), which other people can easily cope with.
With the medication treatment the patient is giving antipsychotic drugs, is usually the most common in treating schizophrenia. Some of these medications include: Chlorpromazine (Thorazine), Haloperidol (Haldol), Perphenazine (Etrafon, Trilafon), Fluphenazine (Prolixin) and Risperdal (Dryden-Edwards, 2011). Although they seem to be effective in suppressing the disorder, sometimes the side effects can be worse than the disease itself. The antipsychotic drugs can sometimes leave patients in an almost “zombie-like” state, most common with Thorazine. It leaves the patient fairly lethargic, and sometimes can even heighten the original symptoms.