Schizophrenia

What Schizophrenia covers

Schizophrenia is one of six nominated behaviours on A2 Unit 3 of WJEC Psychology, Psychology: Implications in the Real World, and learners study three of the six. 29 recall questions across 2 subtopics.

The 2 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• Schizophrenia: characteristics of the behaviour and individual differences explanationsRecall questions on characteristics of the behaviour and individual differences explanations.Open →
• Schizophrenia: social psychological explanations and evaluating those methodsRecall questions on social psychological explanations and evaluating those methods.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Schizophrenia further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Positive symptoms vs Negative symptoms

  Positive symptoms: additions to experience such as hallucinations and delusions. Negative symptoms: reductions in normal functioning such as a loss of goal-directed activity and poverty of speech.

• Expressed emotion vs Formal thought disorder

  Expressed emotion: the emotional climate a relative shows towards a family member, comprising critical comments, hostility and emotional over-involvement. Formal thought disorder: disorganised thinking inferred from speech, shown in derailment, tangential answers and invented words.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Distinguish positive from negative symptoms of schizophrenia, giving two examples of each.

   Model answer

   Positive symptoms are additions to experience such as hallucinations and delusions, whereas negative symptoms are reductions in functioning such as avolition, a loss of goal-directed activity, and alogia, poverty of speech.

2. 2

   Which type of hallucination is most commonly reported, and how long must symptoms persist for a DSM-5 diagnosis?

   Model answer

   Auditory hallucinations, typically hearing one or more voices; DSM-5 requires continuous signs for at least six months, including one month of active-phase symptoms.

3. 3

   Correct the common assumption that people with schizophrenia are dangerous.

   Model answer

   The great majority are never violent, and people with schizophrenia are considerably more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of it.

4. 4

   Why has the diagnosis of schizophrenia been criticised as unreliable or invalid?

   Model answer

   Clinicians using the same criteria have often disagreed on whether a person meets them, and the symptoms overlap heavily with other conditions such as bipolar disorder, so the boundary is unclear.

5. 5

   How does cannabis affect brain chemistry in ways relevant to psychosis?

   Model answer

   THC acts on CB1 receptors of the endocannabinoid system and increases dopamine release in the mesolimbic pathway, the same system implicated in positive symptoms.

6. 6

   What did the Swedish conscript study by Andreasson et al. (1987) find, and what is the main alternative reading of it?

   Model answer

   Conscripts reporting heavy cannabis use were substantially more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia later, with risk rising as use rose; the alternative reading is self-medication, in which people already in the prodromal phase use cannabis to manage early distress.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Schizophrenia revision questions

What does Schizophrenia cover in WJEC A-Level Psychology?

2 subtopics: schizophrenia: characteristics of the behaviour and individual differences explanations and schizophrenia: social psychological explanations and evaluating those methods. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Schizophrenia organised?

By the WJEC 601-5719-7 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.