How Researchers Study Schizophrenia
KEY POINTS
- Schizophrenia remains a mystery to the general public, but researchers have new strategies for studying it.
- Schizophrenia is presently referred to as a spectrum disorder in research.
- Spectrum disorders are better understood through the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) model of research proposed by the NIMH in 2014.
- Through the combined efforts of spectrum, dimension, and RDoC frameworks, we can develop more precise ways to study psychosis.
Despite the public having a primitive perspective on schizophrenia, the research industry is making huge gains in redefining what it means to have the disorder.
More and more, it seems that psychosis can appear in gradients across, between, and within individuals. Someone can have brief psychosis, which may only last a few months (called transient psychosis), with the symptoms never returning. Some people can develop psychosis only during the middle of a manic or depressive episode (associated with bipolar disorder with psychotic symptoms), or some may develop psychosis that is ongoing (associated with schizophrenia). All of those are branches of the same psychosis tree, despite the severe stigma attached to the term “schizophrenia.”
The renaming and redefining of the term haven’t changed much in the last century, but efforts from renaming the disorder to calling for a more precise approach to diagnosing patients are underway.
A new way of looking at schizophrenia
Many physicians and researchers now believe schizophrenia actually occurs on a psychosis “spectrum,” and in recent research, there is more of a push for researchers to refer to the illnesses related to psychosis as Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder (SSD).
That spectrum includes an affective (mood) component and a disorganized thinking component, where bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may exist on opposite ends of the same continuum, with schizoaffective disorder existing in the middle. Five symptom dimensions describe this continuum: positive and negative symptoms, depression, mania, and disorganization."
Read the full available article at Psychology Today
Reflection: Do you agree with this article that this is a step in the right direction to reduce the stigma attached to schizophrenia?
#Schizophrenia #Spectrum #Disorder
@professionalVision2624
Hello!
I think that schizophrenia does have a stigma attached it.
I think it’s great that there continues to be research to try to understand it better.
Hopefully, new research continue to give the public a more accurate representation of what schizophrenia is and how it affects people.
Thanks for the post ✨💛
@innateJoy9602
Thank you for your comment! I also hope that some new research will be done to further reduce the stigma!
@professionalVision2624 Thanks for sharing this.
@Happy900
Thank you for your comment! <3
@professionalVision2624 That's so true. In ederly life the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar are very similar, yet different. In medical books schizophrenia is very often mentioned as a type of psychosis and it is really complex. There is schezoid personality disorder for example apart from the other types of temporary or permanent schizophrenia.
All these different types of disorders for sure are interesting from a research perspective and prove the validity of biopsychosocial model over the biomedical one. No disorder is 100% physical. Thank you for the great post!
@calmDew1576
Amazing response! That is a very intersting comparrison! I learned something new today haha <3 Yes illnesses can be so similar albeit so different at the same time. Thank you for bringing light to this topic!
