Is he mentally ill?

Effects—calming, induce sleep; excessive use leads to tolerance and dependence but tolerance does not increase the amt needed to cause death

Brain damage and personality deterioration may occur

Middle aged and older persons are susceptible to dependency when used as sleeping pills—silent abusers

Alcohol is often used with the barbiturates

Withdrawal can be dangerous and severe

LSD and related drugs—hallucinogens

• LSD and related drugs—hallucinogens

• Chemically-synthesized—discovered in 1938
• Ineffective as a psychological tx—thought it would be a model for psychosis
• Trips can be pleasant or traumatic
• Flashbacks are involuntary recurrences

• Ecstasy (MDMA)

• Both hallucinogen and stimulant—feel hypersexual and uninhibited
• Originally developed as a diet pill in 1913
• Increasingly popular as party drug
• Recreational use is associated with impulsivity and poor judgment
• Negative psychological and health consequences

Dried and crushed leaves of the cannabis sativa plant

• Dried and crushed leaves of the cannabis sativa plant

• Until the 1970s, marijuana rarely led to abuse or dependence, but it is now 4x stronger than it used to be, with 4x as much thc—more addictive

• Physically dependent—withdrawal includes flu-like sx, restlessness, and irritability

• Dangers—can cause panic reactions that last for 3-6 hrs

• Can interfere with sensorimotor tasks and cognitive fx—dangerous while driving

• Memory problems that persist beyond use, particularly for heavy users

• Lung disease—reduces ability to expel air

• Lower sperm count, abnormal ovulation

• Today, about 6% of hs seniors smoke marijuana daily and fewer than 55% believe that is harmful (Johnston et al, 2005)

Poisonous alkaloid

• Poisonous alkaloid

• Dx—nicotine dependency syndrome or nicotine withdrawal disorder

• Higher rates in less educated

• Almost ½ of all smokers have quit

• Health risks decline 5-10 yrs after cessation

• Kills 1000 people a day, 1/6 deaths

• Tx of withdrawal—

• social support groups
• replace cigarette smoking with safer forms of nicotine
• self-directed change
• professional assistance
• all show about a 25 % success rate
• higher rates of success among those hospitalized for cancer, cardiovascular or pulmonary disease

Schizophrenia is a group of psychotic disorders characterized by major disturbances in thought, emotion and behavior

• Schizophrenia is a group of psychotic disorders characterized by major disturbances in thought, emotion and behavior

• No one essential symptom

• Lifetime prevalence of 1%

• Higher risk in some groups—children of schizophrenia, schizophrenia in family, older father (45+) at birth, people of Afro-Caribbean origins living in UK

• Vast majority begin in late adolescence or early adulthood

• Prodromal phase—sx not obvious, but deterioration has begun; social withdrawal

• Males tend to have an earlier onset and more severe form; perhaps the female hormones are protective

An excess or a distortion—hallucinations, delusions, bizarre beh.

• An excess or a distortion—hallucinations, delusions, bizarre beh.

• Disorganized speech: aka formal thought disorder

• Person fails to make sense despite seeming to conform to the semantic and syntactic rules governing verbal communication; aka cognitive slippage, derailment, loosening of associations, incoherence
• Clang
• Word salad
• Perseveration
• Neologisms—words that have meanings only to them
• May appear long before dx of schizophrenia
• Not exclusive to schizophrenia

• Delusions—

• From Latin verb ludere—“to play” tricks are played on the mind
• Beliefs that the rest of soc would disagree with or view as misinterpreting reality
• Not exclusive to schizophrenia
• 97% in one study of schizophrenia had delusions
• Lack insight that beh is odd
• Common types…
• Delusions of bodily changes

Hallucinations

• Hallucinations

• Sensory experience in the absence of any external perceptual stimulus
• Auditory are the most common—75% of those with schizophrenia have these
• Imaging studies show increased activity in Broca’s area—area of the temporal lobe involved in speech production. Perhaps pts misinterpret their own self-generated inner speech as coming from another source
• Types:
• Audible thoughts
• Voices arguing
• Voices commenting
• Can also be visual, gustatory (food tastes strange), olfactory, tactile (tingling, burning, bugs), somatic (inside body)

• Inappropriate affect

Negative symptoms—absence or deficit

• Negative symptoms—absence or deficit

• Poverty of speech—alogia

• Blunted or flat affect—66% of schizophrenia, but report feeling just as much + and – emotion. Further, display greater skin arousal

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