CASE STUDY FOR Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders
1. What is the precipitating stressor event that probably triggered the onset of Janet's schizophrenic episode? What other factors may have contributed? Stress is the main trigger for individuals with schizophrenia. The stressor can be traumatic, such as the loss of a parent or a job or divorce. Less stressful events such as moving or a date night can also initiate a psychotic episode. In Janet’s case, leaving home for the first time, moving into a dormitory and starting college combined to trigger the onset of her schizophrenic episode.
During Janet’s childhood, she had exhibited several episodes of eccentric behavior but was supported and enabled by her parents. Now without
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Identify Janet's primary delusion. How can we understand this as a way that Janet is trying to "make sense" of her collapsing world? How do her hallucinations fit together with her delusion?
Janet’s alternative reality involved her preoccupation with a married professor, Dr. M. She believed he was in love with her and heard voices telling her she had to be with him to prevent the world from destruction. Her preoccupation with Dr. M. and all the fantasies it involved was her primary delusion. Due to her disorganized thinking, she was unable to cope with her real life situation; she was alone, overwhelmed with fears and anxiety and without the ability to process these new changes in her life. Trying to grasp the reasons for her fears led Janet to develop the delusions of persecution and world
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M.’s wife, the college dean, hospital staff and even her roommate were dangerous threats to her mission of saving the world. Janet’s struggle to “save the world” can equate to her hope of being saved herself. These persecutory delusions helped Janet endure her extreme anxiety. Hallucinations, which include hearing voices and seeing things that are not real, are a positive symptom of schizophrenia. Janet experienced auditory hallucinations when she felt thwarted in her delusion that she and Dr. M. must save the world. She was unable to rescue herself from the stress that brought about the delusion formation; this stress and anxiety left her vulnerable to hallucinations. In addition, her paranoia led her to accept the hallucinations as proof of the threats against her plan for world salvation. The command hallucinations Janet heard placed her in danger of performing violent behavior that could harm herself or
Psych: The patient states that she is depressed due to “falling apart” and anxious about dying. Denies suicidal thoughts, memory loss and confusion.
Readers can perceive that the narrator feels kidnapped and tormented by her husband’s lack of interest towards her mental illness, and these hallucinations are the reaction of it, or maybe she is just trying to get her husband’s attention more often. The narrator comments that “John is away all day, and even
She constantly tried to harm her brother and showed signs of dominance when she would abuse him and hurt his genitals. Since she was so engrossed on her body and discovering herself, she became stuck in this stage and as a result of not being able to move on she became aggressive, abusive, and wanting to harm others. Since she was so fixated on harming others, it led to this sadistic behavior and she had this conflict between the drives of the Id and the drives of the Ego. She had impulses to harm others as a result of her being harmed as a child. Being as though she wasn 't cared for and nurtured, she didn 't have loving relationships. She didn 't have the ability to trust others nor did she have the ability to be caring, towards anybody. Since she dealt with a lot of traumatic experiences, she’s been having the same recurring nightmares. She said she has this nightmare where “a man is falling on her and hurting her with a part of himself.” This was a familiar story that I 've once done but on Hysteria with a girl by the name of Bertha Pappenheim. She suffered from hysteria her symptoms are often the surface manifestations of deeply repressed conflicts. I later wrote about her in Studies in Hysteria” (1895). Bertha’s symptoms of this surface manifestation were due to her being sexually abused.
Throughout all of Lori’s illness she suffered from delusions and auditory and visual hallucinations. Lori’s delusions were often death centric. She often believed the voices, part of her hallucinations, when they said people were trying to kill her. One
In Charlotte Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," Jane, the main character, is a good example of Sigmund Freud’s Studies In Hysteria. Jane suffers from symptoms such as story making and daydreaming. Jane has a nervous weakness throughout the story.
According to Freeman (2008, pp. 24–26) delusions are multidimensional. In addition to mentioning the main characteristics of delusions such as being unfounded, firmly held, and resistant to change but also preoccupying and distressing, he also mention that they interfere with the social dimension of a person’s life. The author described the types of delusions as Functional versus organic,( ‘organic’ if it was the result of brain damage and ‘functional’ if it had no known organic cause and was explained primarily via psychodynamic or motivational factors.) ,Monothematic versus polythematic, (polythematic in that they extend to more than one theme, where the themes can be interrelated and ,monothematic where apart from the content of delusion itself, no other (unrelated) bizarre belief needs to be reported by the same person.), Circumscribed versus elaborated, (A delusion is circumscribed if it does not lead to the formation of other
Deborah Blau is a girl troubled with a mental disorder, from which she attempted to commit suicide at the beginning of the story. Her parents brought her to a psychiatric facility from which her doctor, Dr. Fried, tries to break down the barriers Deborah places in front of her illness so that she may not be abandoned, which is her fear. When misunderstand, she escapes to her imaginary world of Yr; it once was a beautiful place of mythical Gods, but they bring her pain with tyranny, controlling her in some cases. Deborah eventually opens up to Dr. Fried about this world, in which she accepts it, rather than denying it, ensuring her patients trust . This gives Deborah a choice between it and reality after they finish with treatment, but during treatment she wishes for Dr. Fried to look into a deeper meaning to which Yr demands her.
Amy Hudock explains that physicians did not understand women at the time (3). These physicians complicated women more than they should have (Hudock 3). Being that women are different, especially physically, doctors tried to link differences, such as the womb, to hallucinations women have (Hudock 3). The "psychosis" entry in the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia 6th edition states that, "psychosis… A broad category of mental disorder encompassing the most serious mental disturbances," and that, "neurosis… Denoted by the 'mild' mental disorders which did not interfere significantly with the ability to function, or severely impair an individual's conception of reality“ (1). The rest cure clearly caused psychosis in the narrator because she definitely had an impaired conception of reality. The narrator eventually does lose motivation, begins to see a woman behind the wallpaper, and eventually rips up the wallpaper. The narrator starts having serious symptoms of psychosis, such as how the narrator starts to see the woman behind the wallpaper (Scott 202). Based on the condition of the room, the narrator starts to rip up the wallpaper like previous inhabitants of the room (Scott 202). While her behavior appears to be strange or psychotic, it eventually leads to her
The first caused of the narrator's eventual insanity is her husband. Her husband does not take her seriously. Numerous times in the story, the narrator would say something to her husband and he would immediately shoot her down with his criticism. Her husband, John, misdiagnosed her with nervous depression. The narrator is actually suffering from post-pardum depression.
I believe when the narrator saw the woman in the wallpaper she saw so much of herself in the woman she thought she was the woman. Her illness mainly started as depression, but as she was locked away in her room alone with only her thoughts her symptoms slowly started to show. From seeing broken necks, a woman in the wallpaper, jumping out the window, or burning down the house . All of these things contributed to her to her slowly starting to lose her mind, and in the end she
There are several symptoms and diagnoses with religious implications, the most notable being psychosis and delusions. Religion and spirituality’s domination in psychopathology still remains one of the most researched topics. Common symptoms of the psychological illness, schizophrenia, including hallucinations and delusions that have religious undertones are often classified with religious and supernatural themes. There is an explicit implication of religious hallucinations and delusions formulated into religious themes such as, prayer, sin, and possession or religious figures. Common themes of religious delusions were found to be that of persecution, influence, and self-significance. ,
After this episode a professor convinced her to go to the hospital and reluctantly she complied. This hospital did not take kindly to her psychosis and restrained her numerous times with straps. She had never been treated this way before and was confused and frightened. She later said for a hospital for the mentally ill it had been a brutal experience (157). She then was moved to a different hospital, memorial Unit 10 (MU10) where she was first diagnosed with “Schizophrenia with acute exacerbation” (167). Though she had finally gotten a diagnosis for her broken brain it seemed more like a death sentence than a diagnosis. She continued on with life in depression, psychosis, and denial.
Theoretical Approach For Janet’s case, the theoretical approach that I would use is the Ntu Psychotherapy approach. According to Hays & Erford (2018), “Beyond being simply an approach to counseling, it is a holistic philosophy and lifestyle that also provides conceptualizations for human behavior and functioning” (p. 552). This approach will bring simplicity to why she is acting the way she acts.
She reports that she often has mood swings and bouts of anger at times because of her birth control implant. Jane reports that when she gets upset she reacts by slamming doors, screaming, and/or arguing with her husband John. Jane’s husband and her mother do not feel there is a concern regarding Jane’s recent suicide attempt, mood swings, and bouts of anger. They feel as though she just had a melt down and will be fine in the future.
There are many causes to Schizophrenia. Many causes are genetics, brain chemistry and structure, and the environment of a human being. Genetically Schizophrenia can run through a family and can be passed on generations at a time. “Individuals with a first degree relative (parent or sibling) who has schizophrenia have a 10 percent chance of developing the disorder, as opposed to the 1 percent chance of the general population.” (Helpguide.org) Identical twins are a good example of this. “If an identical twin is diagnosed with Schizophrenia the other twin is 50 percent more likely to also be diagnosed with the mental disorder (psychcentral.com).” Brain chemistry and structure is another big factor in the cause of Schizophrenia. Neurotransmitters-