Topic title: Schizophrenia
Year group: 13
When taught: Term 2
What are we learning?
- Classification of schizophrenia. Positive symptoms of schizophrenia, including hallucinations and delusions. Negative symptoms of schizophrenia, including speech poverty and avolition. Reliability and validity in diagnosis and classification of schizophrenia, including reference to co-morbidity, culture and gender bias and symptom overlap.
- Biological explanations for schizophrenia: genetics and neural correlates, including the dopamine hypothesis.
- Psychological explanations for schizophrenia: family dysfunction and cognitive explanations, including dysfunctional thought processing.
- Drug therapy: typical and atypical antipsychotics.
- Cognitive behaviour therapy and family therapy as used in the treatment of schizophrenia. Token economies as used in the management of schizophrenia.
- The importance of an interactionist approach in explaining and treating schizophrenia; the diathesis-stress model.
Why is this important to know?
- 1% of the world’s population has schizophrenia, but the general population rarely has a sound understanding of the illness and there is often stigma associated with the illness as a result of depictions in the media.
Where does this link into our past and future learning?
- It links back to the Approaches topic in terms of biological and cognitive explanations of Schizophrenia.
- The concept of comorbidity and risk factors links to studying these same concepts in the Addiction topic.
- It is a development of the psychopathology topic studied in year 12, where three disorders are studied, here looking at one disorder in greater depth.
How will we be assessed on this topic?
- Students will sit a formal exam on this topic in the summer. This section makes up 24 marks and 30 minutes of Paper 3 at A Level. They will be asked questions varying in size from multiple choice up to 16 mark essays.
- There will also be mid topic and end of topic tests on the unit when we study it.
- Students will also have recap tests / questioning / exam questions on this topic during most lessons.
What makes a strong piece of work in this topic? What are teachers hoping to see?
- A detailed description of the content.
- Sustained evaluation that is fully ‘PEEEL’ed.
- Using specific research examples to support the points they are making.
- Using correctly key terminology
What key words are there in this topic?
Quizlet. Click here
What can I try if I want to stretch and challenge myself on this topic?
- There is an extension challenge set for this unit. This consists of 4 interesting tasks such as videos to watch, podcasts to listen to, articles to read and online courses to complete with a feedback task at the end. Please see your subject teacher to access this sheet.
What wider reading can be done on this topic?
- There are several Psychology Review Magazine articles relevant to this topic that you can read to extend your knowledge. Please ask your subject teachers to access copies.
- The mental health charity MIND has a wealth of information of the condition:
