Paranoia schizophrenia

Paranoia A delusion of persecution or grandeur, one of the positive clinical symptoms of schizophrenia. 

In addition to the above behavioral and performance tests, there are a number of well-known tests of personality that may provide useful information in select clinical studies. The most well known of these tests is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). This test consists of 550 affirmative statements to which a true or false response is given and requires about one hour to complete. It is given to adults over the age of 16 and is scored for ten scales depression, hysteria, hypochondriasis, psychopathic deviate, masculinity-femininity, paranoia, hypomania, schizophrenia, psychasthenia, and social introversion. 

Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective Disorder. Cross sectionally, it is often difficult to distinguish major depression with psychotic features from the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. There are theoretically qualitative differences in the psychosis that may help to make the distinction. Psychosis in the context of a mood disorder tends to be manifested by persecutory and nihilistic themes, but schizophrenia is more often characterized by paranoia and disorganization. However,... 

In addition to the acute ingestion of these hallucinogenic drugs, the chronic use of alcohol, amphetamines, or cocaine can lead to paranoia that in many respects resembles the psychosis of schizophrenia. In these cases, the psychotic symptoms may persist long after the substance use has been stopped. 

Cluster A Personality Disorders (Schizotypal PD, Schizoid PD, Paranoid PD). These are the odd and eccentric personality disorders. They all share certain features in common with schizophrenia, but schizotypal PD in particular appears to be most closely related to schizophrenia. The schizophrenia-like symptoms of these personality disorders (e.g., magical thinking, paranoia, social withdrawal) are less severe and generally don t impair social or employment function as severely as schizophrenia. 

This category is attributed to Kahibaum and Kraepelin, who saw paranoia as a chronic, unremitting system of delusions distinguished by both the absence of hallucinations and the deterioration seen in schizophrenia. This disorder is characterized by one or more nonbizarre delusions of at least 1 month s duration. 

Psychotic episodes may be misdiagnosed as schizophrenia in younger patients or dementia with paranoia in the elderly. 

These drugs are used to treat serious mental disease such as the manic phase of manic depression, organic pyschosis, paranoia, or schizophrenia. They are also called antipsychotics or neuroleptics. 

Schizophrenia is a devastating mental disorder characterized by abnormal thinking, psychosis (delusions, paranoia, hearing voices), lack of emotion, and loss of function in one s school or workplace. The bizarre thought patterns of schizophrenics often resemble that of dream content, and in fact it was once hypothesized that people with schizophrenia suffered from intrusions of REM sleep into wakefulness, much like that seen in people with narcolepsy. However, most scientific evidence suggests that this is not the case. 

The psychosis that least resembles dreaming is that of schizophrenia, because, like mania, it has the paranoia and accusatory auditory hallucinations (which dreaming lacks), and the emotional tone is often flat (about as far away from dream elation as we can get). Anxiety is about the only shared property, and that is not very specific. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the typical schizophrenic psychosis is so different from that of dreaming. After all, it is the neuromodulator dopamine that has been most strongly implicated in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, and that is the only neuromodulator that has not been implicated in dreaming. We will discuss this interesting difference in more detail when we consider how antipsychotic medication may work. 

The hypothetical link between dopamine and schizophrenia was forged by two reciprocally related findings. The first was that potent dopamine agonist stimulants like d-amphetamine and cocaine could cause a psychosis that was schizophrenia-like, in that it had auditory hallucinations and paranoia. The second was that the neuroleptic drugs that were effective in reversing both schizophrenia and stimulant-induced psychosis were dopamine blockers. Moreover, the antipsychotic potency of the neuroleptics was proportional to their binding affinity to the D2 receptor. 

SCHIZOPHRENIA A medical condition that falls under the category of psychotic disorders. People with schizophrenia suffer from a variety of symptoms, including confusion, disordered thinking, paranoia, hallucinations, emotional numbness, and speech problems. 

PCP ORGANIC MENTAL DISORDER A condition similar to schizophrenia that can occur as a result of taking PCP and last for weeks, months, or even a year. It is characterized by confusion, disordered thinking, paranoia, and speech problems. 

PCP is currently being studied in animals because it appears to produce changes in the brain that are associated with schizophrenia. People taking PCP often experience effects that are very similar to the symptoms of schizophrenia, including disordered thinking, hallucinations, paranoia, and disrupted speech. Research into the... 

Some people who take PCP experience symptoms very similar to those seen in people with schizophrenia, including delusions, paranoia, memory problems, confusion, disordered thinking, and impaired speech. This is called PCP organic mental disorder. Such schizophrenialike episodes usually last several days, but they may last weeks or months after taking the drug only once. Such a reaction is most common in chronic users, but it can... 

For decades researchers have looked at whether intoxication with certain drugs could mimic the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia. Amphetamines increase dopamine release and can induce some positive symptoms like paranoia. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) affects 5-HT receptors but tends to induce visual perception changes and not frank hallucinations. Phencyclidine (PCP), however, induces a state in healthy controls that seems very similar to schizophrenia. This includes thought disorder and negative symptoms... 

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