Esquizofrenia

Psychopathology and social pathology

Andrea


2011/2012

Chilhood-Onset Schizophrenia:
Abstract:
Schizophrenia in children is a disease whose diagnosis is difficult. There are most studies showing symptoms in school children and adolescents and their continuity with that in adults. However there are still gaps in children younger diagnoses. We will make a description ofsymptoms and associated disorders, the biological aspects, techniques and evaluation tools and the most important treatments in childhood schizophrenia.

* Brief historical context:
We will emphasize researches conducted after 1980, when the major diagnostic classification systems endorsed the practice of using the same criteria to diagnose schizophrenia in children and adults. The construct ofchildhood-onset schizophrenia was used to denote a relatively heterogeneous group of children with adult-type schizophrenia, autism, and other psychotic conditions. Renewed interest in this affectation has been stimulated by some reasons:
* Research suggesting that childhood-onset schizophrenia may be a more severe and familial variant of the disorder has stimulated the hope thatetiological pathways for the disorder may be more clearly discernible in this, than in later-onset schizophrenia.
* Because of their youth, findings on children with schizophrenia are less likely to be confounded by such factors as a neuroleptic treatment and years of dysfunction.
* The emergence of a developmental psychopathology as a scientific discipline, in conjunction with the findings bystudies of children at risk for schizophrenia has stimulated interest in such developmental questions as the impact of age in this illness.
Changes in diagnostic criteria:
* In the 1930s child psychiatry began to emerge as a medical subspecialty
* This period was characterized by multiple shifts in the definition of schizophrenia as the field addressed the still unresolved problem ofdefining the boundaries of this.
* The broad construct of “childhood schizophrenia”, included children who today would receive diagnosis of autistic disorder, schizophrenia and psychotic disorder not specified.

Potter in 1933 performed the following criteria for making a diagnosis in a pre-pubertal child:
1) A generalized retraction of interest from the environment
2) Dereisticthinking, feeling and acting.
3) Disturbances of thought, manifest of through block-ing, symbolization, condensation, incoherence.
4) Defect in emotional rapport
5) Diminution, rigidity and distortion of affect
6) Alterations of behavior with either an increase of motility leading to incessant activity.
In 1968 the DSM-II did a new concept of child-hood schizophrenia, reflectinginfluences of Bender, arguing that this term is for cases in which schizophrenic symptoms appear before puberty. Autistic an atypical behavior failure to develop identity separate from the mother’s and general unevenness, gross immaturity and inadequacy in development, it may result in mental retardation, which should be also diagnosed.

* Definition of schizophrenia, its core symptoms anddiagnostic:
Definition: Schizophrenia is a psychotic and heterogeneous disorder with no one single clinical symptom being a cardinal diagnostic feature. Because of this, schizophrenia often exhibit a group of disorders, characterized by the presence of one or more of a series of key symptoms.
The main symptoms included on DSM-IV and are as follows:
* The minimal duration of characteristic psychoticsymptoms should to be present at least for one month
* The core symptoms:
Delusions Mood-incongruent Hallucinations Thought disorder Disorganized speech Catatonic behavior
There are some symptoms reported among different samples of children with schizophrenia, like depression, oppositional behavior, conduct problems and suicidal tendencies.
Diagnosing this illness in children...