How psychiatrists diagnose schizophrenia?
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| How psychiatrists diagnose schizophrenia? photo credit: National Cancer Institute @nci @unplash |
@healthbiztips by Arlene Gentallan | psychology blog
Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder in which an individual seemingly have a distorted perception of reality. Symptoms such as hallucination, delusion, and disordered cognitive functioning makes them loose touch of reality.
It is the scope of practice of a psychiatrist to diagnose mental disorder such as schizophrenia using the guidelines set on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5), a diagnostic tool published by the American Psychiatric Association.
A diagnosis of schizophrenia is made on a patient who experiences at least 2 active symptoms listed below for at least 1 month and the person has been having marked deterioration in his/her personal, work, social, or academic life for at least 6 months. Of course, other possible causes of psychotic symptoms such as an underlying medical condition or substance abuse must first be identified in order to make the diagnosis.
2 of the following active symptoms must be present for at least 1 month:
1. Delusion. (false beliefs such as a strong unreal conviction of an individual that he can fly, other people are plotting against him, someone will kill him, he is the smartest person in the world or he is constantly under spy camera surveillance)
2. Hallucination. (e.g. seeing, feeling, smelling, or hearing non-existent things)
3. Disorganized speech. (e.g. a person talks using a jumble of words, jumps from one idea to another that's no logical and isn't able to express clear thoughts)
4. Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior. (e.g. bizarre and purposeless physical movement, assuming an odd posture, body rigidity, or inability to voluntary move)
5. Negative symptoms. (such blunt affect, decrease eye contact, converses in monotone voice, blank stare, stays muted or talks too little). Pointing out a negative symptom is quite hard especially if you are not familiar with the usual behavior of the person prior to the onset of schizophrenic symptoms because some of these traits are seen in individuals with sound mental health.
