# Bethak - The Desi Lounge > Student Zone >  A.P.Psychology FBQ on Schizophrenia

## rizzy81

*What Is Schizophrenia?*

_Often misunderstood, schizophrenia is a psychological disorder affecting 1% of the population. In addition treating the disorder, psychologist work to identify its nature & origin_
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Identify 2 characteristic symptoms used to diagnose schizophrenia*

Schizophrenia shows itself in disorganized thinking and inapproperiate emotions. For example, they might laugh at a very sad and emotional momment, and do the opposite when not necessary. Another symptom most schizophreniacs go through is Catatonic or extreme negativism. For example, they would want to look as perfect as possible, in order to do that they would start sacrifising sleep, being socially active, and anything else that would get them the necessary time for them to take shower twice a day, do good make up, set their hairs, and many other things that would make them not look ill in society.

*Discuss a research finding that supports a genetic basis for schizophrenia*

Twin studies show that if one identical twin has schizophrenia the other is most likely has it as well, but same cannot be said about fraternal twins.
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What is the dopamine hypothesis regarding the origins of schizophrenia?*

The relationship between this psychological disorder and dopamine is very easy to understand. The drugs that block dopamine decrease the symptoms in schizophrenia and the drugs that increase dopamine increase the symptoms of schizophrenia.
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Describe how medications used to treat schizophrenia affect the actions of neurotransmitters at the synapses.*

Medications treat or try to cure schizophrenia by blocking dopamine receptors, preventing the release of dopamine in an effort to decreae it, and lowering the levels of dopamine.

*Identify a risk inherent in using medications in the treatment of schizophrenia*

Using these medications can cause one to lose sense of self, may cause blurred vision, change of blood pressure, loss of white blood cells and many more. To deal with these side effects the patient has to take additional medications and all this can bring even more stress on a schizophrenic patient.
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People sometimes confuse schizophrenia with dissociative identity disorder (DID). Identify two key characteristics that differentiate DID from schizophrenia.*

DID is when the patient has more then one identity orpersonalities and is associated with child abuse. On the other hand schizophrenia is a physiological mental disorder, it actually has to do with biological aspect of our lives, for example it is most likely caused by too much dopamine.

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