PSYC 311 Chapter Notes - Chapter 16.1: Mental Disorder, Heritability, Neural Development
9 Jun 2016
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The symptoms of mental disorders include deficient or inappropriate social behaviours, illogical, incoherent, or obsessional thoughts, inappropriate emotional responses, and delusions and hallucinations. Research has indicated that many of these symptoms are caused by abnormalities in the brain, both structural and biochemical. Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder that affects about 1% of the population worldwide. The symptoms for schizophrenia are universal and clinicians have developed criteria for reliably diagnosing the disorder in people of a wide variety of cultures. Schizophrenia literally means split mind, but it does not imply a split or multiple personality. It is intended to refer to a break with reality caused by disorganization of various functions of the mind. Schizophrenia is characterized by three categories of symptoms: positive, negative and cognitive. Positive symptoms make themselves known by their presence: they include thought disorders, hallucinations and delusions.
