Schizophrenia, Psychosis, and Lifespan Development

University of Phoenix
Psy 410

November 19, 2012

Schizophrenia, Psychosis and Lifespan Development Disorders are categorized by the DSM-IV-TR and put into different levels of occurrences. Some of these are age specific and developmentally. One such category is Disorders usually first diagnosed in infancy, childhood, and adolescence (Hansell & Damour, 2008). Many of these disorders can be spotted at any stage of life the prevalence of some of them is more likely at different developmental times. Some of these disorders are Schizophrenia, psychosis, and lifespan developments with the psychological stress and physical disorders thrown in there. This paper will also look at the biological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components of schizophrenia/psychosis and lifespan developments.
Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Psychosis is defined as a state of being profoundly out of touch with reality (Hansell & Damour, 2008, Pg.455). The symptoms of this disorder consist of a complete loss or separation with what is considered normal reality. Hallucinations and delusions are often the most common symptoms that are noticed first and help to diagnose someone with this disorder. Psychosis is popular in many different mental illnesses but is found more often than any other in schizophrenia. In personality disorders, though, the bizarre thinking and experiences are less severe than they are in schizophrenia (Kring, Davison, Neale & Johnson, 2007). Schizophrenia is a commonly misunderstood yet scary disorder that many people do not understand because of how complex or simple it can be. It is also form of psychosis because of the adaptive functioning and out of touch sensibility people with this disorder have. There are five different types of schizophrenia and they are paranoid, disorganized,