CBT For Psychosis Case Study

Schizophrenia is a serious debilitating mental illness in which the victim is afflicted with bizarre delusions and prominent hallucinations. The delusions are profoundly invalid beliefs, and the hallucinations are equally invalid perceptions. There is also a disordering of the reasoning process, disordered emotional expression, and loss of motivation for work and social living. Typically, the illness starts in adolescence or early adulthood and, if untreated, usually worsens with age. (Lickey, Gordon, 1991)

Today, the hallmark symptom of schizophrenia is psychosis, meaning a patient experiences hallucination and delusions. The hallucinations usually manifest as the patient hearing voices inside their head. With delusions, patients think that a person in trying to read their mind, control their thoughts, or that someone is trying to hurt them (“Schizophrenia,” n.d.). With these types of symptoms, it makes it very difficult for a patients to manage their emotions, make decisions, think clearly, as well as live successfully independently (“Schizophrenia – Fact Sheet,” n.d.). For example, often times patients with schizophrenia do not make sense when they talk or just sit for a very long time without talking at all (“Schizophrenia,” n.d.). This

Canadian Mental Health Association (2014) defines paranoid psychosis as a serious but treatable medical condition that reflects a disturbance in brain functioning. A person with psychosis experiences some loss of contact with reality, characterized by changes in their way of thinking, believing, perceiving and/or behaving. For the person experiencing psychosis, the condition can be very disorienting and distressing. Without effective treatment, psychosis can overwhelm the lives of individuals and families.

According the fourth edition diagnostic manual of mental disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), the category psychotic disorders (Psychosis) include Schizophrenia, paranoid (Delusional), disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, residual type. Other clinical types include Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Affective Disorder/Manic depression, mania, Psychotic depression, delusional (paranoid) disorders. These are mental disorders in which the thoughts, affective response or ability to recognize reality, and ability to communicate and relate to others are sufficiently impaired to interfere grossly with the capacity to deal with reality; the classical and general characteristics of psychosis are impaired reality testing,

When people hear the term psychological disorder, they usually think of someone who might have gone crazy or are on the verge of losing their mind. That is not always true however as, some of those diseases are pretty severe and whereas others that are not too harsh. A prime example of this would be the movie A Beautiful Mind where John Nash was having false imaginations of things including agents trying to kill this other person and amongst many other things. But none of those imaginations were true, he was just imagining them. Later it is revealed that Nash suffers from Schizophrenia. “Schizophrenia is a collection of related

10. What are some of the limitations of this study that decrease the potential for generalizing the findings to the target population?

with significant results possibly being a side effect of large sample sizes. Further there were

Interrogating construct validity, how well the variables in the study were manipulated and measured, is also essential when dealing with causal claims (Morling, 2012). Again, because so little information from the methods section was addressed in Bergland's (2014) article, readers cannot validate the construct validly of the study. It would have been

Methodologically, the hypothesis is not founded upon methodological impartiality. One of the vital limitations is the absence of

The sudden severe symptoms of schizophrenia is referred to as “acute,” a more common condition is called “psychosis.” This form is paired with a state of mental impairment marked by hallucinations, which are disturbances of sensory perception, and/or delusions, which are false yet strongly held personal beliefs that result from an inability to separate rea from unreal experiences. Less apparent symptoms, social isolation or withdrawal, or unusual speech, thinking, or behavior, may precede, be seen along with, or follow the psychotic symptoms. The amount of psychotic episodes, if any, vary from person to person. Those that experience one episode live relatively normal lives, however, recurring patterns of illness take a longer recovery period with extensive treatment.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (2013) defines Schizophrenia as one of the most common serious mental health conditions affecting men and women equally. It is a chronic condition that causes a range of different psychological symptoms including hallucinations (hearing or seeing things that do not exist) and delusions (believing in things that are untrue). These symptoms are often referred to as ‘symptoms of psychosis’, when an individual cannot distinguish between reality and their imagination (DSM, 2013). Wahashi et al. (2007) suggest that patients with schizophrenia often have difficulty in coping with everyday stressors and suffer emotional withdrawal and poor social functioning this can be particularly pronounced in patients living in an institutionalised setting (Wahashi et al. 2007).

Depending on client and their circumstance, some therapists will implement another factor of CBT that focuses on the prevention of saftey behaviors. According to Davey (2014), “saftey behaviors are activites that the sufferer will deploy as soon as they think they are having a panic attack, and they develop the belief that this activity has saved them from the catastrophic outcome they thought would happen” (p. 167-168). A great example of a safe behavior would be a sufferer holding on to a chair/object if they believe they are having a heart attack (catastrophic outcome). Saftey behaviors are avoidance responses that helps maintain not only the anxeity that contributes to the panic attacks, but it also maintains the dysfunctional catastrophic beliefs that make the attacks so distressing as well (Davey, 2014). Therefore, targeting this type of behavior during CBT will help distort this form of manipulation.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder and it is defined by the diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorder (DSM-IV) as a term introduced by Bleuler, which refers to a persistent, often chronic and usually serious mental disorder affecting a variety of aspects of behavior, thinking, and emotion. Patients with delusions or hallucinations may be described as psychotic. Thinking may be disconnected and illogical. Peculiar behaviors may be associated with social withdrawal and disinterest. According to the DSM-IV, schizophrenia is divided into positive and negative clusters of mental symptoms. The positive may be considered as symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. Unlike the positive symptoms, the negative cluster of symptoms for

This study was limited due to the small sample size. Although the conclusions are valid, more research with a

Schizophrenia has been described as severe disturbances in thoughts that affect the loss of contact with reality (Ward, 2015). A key characteristic of this severe brain disorder includes hallucinations (illusionary perceptions that are not shared by others, i.e. sensory hallucinations, namely auditory) (Ward, 2015). In order to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, one must show instances of both positive and negative symptoms along with their impaired ability to live a normal functioning life (Ward, 2015). In fact, 60%-70% of schizophrenic patients meet the criteria for hallucinations (Jardri, Pouchet, Pins, & Thomas, 2011). Even though hallucinations can include any of the five senses, Audio Verbal Hallucinations (AVH) is the most common (Jardri et al., 2011). It is widely known that at least in 25% of patients, who experience hallucinations are also resistant to medications resulting in the decrease of quality of life for such individuals (Jardri et al., 2011; Sommer et al., 2008). To add on, therapeutic treatments for despairing symptoms of schizophrenia are seldom.