Schizophrenia is a serious mental health disorder that affects the person’s ability to think, feel and behave adequately. Schizophrenia as a mental health condition is characterized by thoughts or experiences that are not in touch with reality. Symptoms like disordered thinking, hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, lack of motivation, flat affect, and catatonic behavior, comprise what we term schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has a severe impact on the individual’s life and the family involved and the health care system. A person diagnosed with schizophrenia undergoes a tremendous cost of disrupted social and psychological aspects of life.

There are various subtypes of schizophrenia, derived from the historical views and research; paranoid type, disorganized type, catatonic type, undifferentiated type, residual type, simple schizophrenia; schizophrenic spectrum disorders. Regardless of the type of schizophrenia, individuals are assessed on the basis of 2 types of symptoms; positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms, most frequent in early stages/ episodes, reflect distortion or excess of normal functions of daily life. Negative symptoms, usually infrequent in early stages but quite prominent in later stages, emerge as behavioral deficits or a decrease in normal functions of daily life.

The course will help aspiring psychology students gain an in-depth understanding of the subtypes of schizophrenia, and how to distinguish them taking into consideration the clusters, differential diagnosis, and comorbidity, which will all be taught in the lectures. There will be discussions, and assignments involving case studies, which will help the learners to broaden their understanding of the concept of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia, and its subtypes, combined with other symptoms and factors, make it hard for the psychologist to make an accurate diagnosis of the individual being assessed. DSM 5 and ICD-10 concepts, epidemiology, prognostic factors, prevalence, and the course will be covered in the lecture. Learners will also be taught effective intervention techniques and management and self-help techniques to help deliver an efficient treatment plan for the client. This is an introductory course that is promising to be helpful for the students to be able to gain knowledge and skills to understand schizophrenia and related concerns and conditions in an effective way, which will definitely help them in their future education.

Duration: 03 Months