DIAGNOSIS OF
SCHIZOPHRENIA The five characteristic
symptoms of schizophrenia are
delusion due to untrue abnormal beliefs that are scaring and
mostly paranoiac; hallucinations that one is hearing voices
that are occasioned with unconnected thoughts and facts; strange
behavioral characteristics; failure recognize and respond to positive
or negative stimuli and finally emotional outbursts. (Finegold n.d.)
For a diagnosis of schizophrenia to take place, one must
show prolonged withdrawal symptoms with unexpected emotional anger
and confusion and even violence. Then delusion that something’s
that are scaring such as ‘CIA monitoring one activities using
camera’ which were otherwise being used for normally work area
surveillance is a classic diagnosis of schizophrenia. These symptoms
must last for a long time as in most cases over a year, in comparison
to another longer
period of say of normal life period. (Finegold
n.d.)
The alternative possible diagnosis for Dale is Alzheimer
disease. However this has been found to be most common in the elderly
from 60
years and above and is more pronounced at the age of 80
years. In this case Dale is only 21 years so Schizophrenia would be
the most likely diagnosis. The additional information to be known to
make a diagnosis for schizophrenia is whether any of the parents or
sibling has had a past diagnosis of schizophrenia as a matter of
influence by the genetic set up. Also, there is need to know whether
there was a likelihood of a stressful environment that could have
caused the initial withdrawal. As such the living and working
environment for Dale needs to be examined. Further information need
to come from the mother to establish if she had any kind of maternal
problems during birth, the details of her diets during the pregnancy
period, which is if the diets are balanced nutritionally and lastly,
if the mother during her 24th to 32nd week of
pregnancy of Dale ever had an attack of influenza. (Finegold n.d.)
The correct diagnosis for Dale so far would be Schizophrenia.
This is because Dale, who is suffering from illusions and ‘thinks’
that the normal security surveillance cameras installed by his boss
at his work area are as an instruction from the CIA who he dreads.
Yet Dale would not substantiate why the CIA would be spying on him;
he just believes they want to spy on him! Dale even believed that
there could be some secret cameras installed at his home. And this is
evidence in the diagnosis of unconnected thoughts of the
schizophrenics. Dale’s parents also gave evidence that for the last
one year Dale had been acting in a withdrawn manner and would
occasionally exhibit outburst of anger and confusion. This is
corroborated with the incidence at the store when Dale shouted at his
boss, broke equipment and caused confusion and a breach of peace to
the effect that customers were scared away. (Finegold n.d.)
From Dr. Green’s note book it was noted that Dale was
showing withdrawal signs and paid little attention during the time
that he was being interviewed after the incidence. He equally had
trouble in focus and responding to questions. After all these have
been recorded preliminarily, then the DSM-IV data sheet as shown in
DSM-IV website will need to be filled up in order to capture the
finer details. This covers the history of drugs taken over the last
30 days, the general medical conditions, onset of symptoms, history
of alcohol and drug abuse, family history, cognitive levels, state of
hallucination, physical symptoms, medical conditions, delusion types,
hallucination types, disturbance sign in last or more than 6 months,
and behavioral types. (DSM-IV 2008)
List
of references:
DSM-IV Website; (n.d.) .Schizophrenia Advanced Diagnosis Sheet v.
3.0; Available at
http://psyweb.com/Sheettest/SCDSheet1.jsp
. Accessed on January 15, 2008.
Finegold,
P., (n.d). The Biological Basis of Mental Illness. Electronic copy
available at
http://www.geneticfutures.com/cracked/info/sheet9.asp
. Accessed on January 15,
2008.
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