Psychiatric disorders Psychosis Schizophrenia

Psychosis, or psychotic disorder A major psychiatric illness including schizophrenia... 

Psychiatric Disorders. The main indications for DA antagonists are the treatment of adult schizophrenia, and childhood psychosis. Haloperidol and chlorpromazine are the most frequently employed. 

Older classifications of psychiatric disorder divided diseases into psychoses and neuroses. The term psychosis is still widely used to describe a severe mental illness with the presence of hallucinations, delusions or extreme abnormalities of behaviour including marked overactivity, retardation and catatonia, usually accompanied by a lack of insight. Psychotic disorders therefore include schizophrenia, severe forms of depression and mania. Psychosis may also be due to illicit substances or organic conditions. Clinical features of schizophrenia may be subdivided into positive symptoms, which include hallucinations, delusions and thought disorder and negative symptoms such as apathy, flattening of affect and poverty of speech. 

Taken together, most studies confirm the vulnerability hypothesis for cannabis use and schizophrenia. Thus, schizophrenia patients should probably not use cannabis because a psychotic episode can be induced in someone with a preexisting disorder and, indeed, increased hospitalization rates and symptom exacerbation have been demonstrated (Caspari, 1999). Increased rates of psychosis are also observed in those meeting the criteria for caimabis dependence (Fergusson, Horwood, and Swain-Campbell, 2003). Hollister, (1986) summarized in his review (p. 6-7) It would seem reasonable to assume that caimabis might unmask latent psychiatric disorders. ... 

The major psychological adverse effects of cannabis include anxiety, paranoia, and psychosis. Thus, psychological screening should include a detailed psychiatric evaluation to identify individuals with a history of anxiety, paranoia, psychosis, or psychiatric disorders such as depression, manic depression (bipolar), panic disorder, or schizophrenia, which may be exacerbated by cannabis. 

Schizophrenia is a complex psychiatric disorder that is characterized by three major categories of symptoms positive, negative and cognitive. Although current pharmacotherapies are effective treatments for psychosis, there remains a need for drugs with improved efficacy towards negative symptoms and cognitive impairment, as well as reduced side effects. The dopamine hypothesis has... 

The key to distinguishing schizophrenia from a psychotic mood disorder is to obtain a history of the patient prior to the acute episode of psychosis. This includes both the past history from medical and psychiatric records and collateral history... 

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