Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia - Article Example

Article Critique on Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia Total Number of Words 499 IntroductionUpon reading the article journal written by Frith (1996) entitled “Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia”, the article journal will be fully criticized. First, a brief summary with regards to the qualifications of the author including the date wherein the article was published, the main purpose of the article, the authors’ target audiences, and the type of journal being examined will be thoroughly discussed. Eventually, critique with regards to the author’s argument and proposed diagnostic tests for schizophrenic patients will be provided by gathering and analyzing other relevant literatures that will support the claims. As part of discussing the signs and symptoms found in schizophrenic patients, the effectiveness of the author’s proposed diagnostic procedures will be criticized based on the diagnostic intervention as proposed by other equally qualified authors. Professional Qualifications of the Authors Cris Frith is highly qualified as an author of the journal article on Schizophrenia. For many years, Frith works as a psychiatric professor and a member of Wllcome Department – Cognitive Neurology at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in London (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2008). Aside from being a highly competitive psychiatric professor, Frith has personally written other recent article journals by himself and together with other highly qualified authors including “Editorial: In Praise of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry” (Frith, 2008) and “Different Brain Circuits Underlie Motor and Percetual Representations of Temporal Intervals” (Buenti et al. 2008) among others (BioInfoBank Library, 2008). Publishing Date and the Main Purpose of the Article The article journal entitled “Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia” was officially publised back in 1996. In the past, cognitive tests are often considered the best diagnostic tests for patients with schizophrenia (Frith, 1996). This is primarily due to the fact that there is not one psychological test that can be used in measuring the neuropsychological impairments that are present in schizophrenia patients. In line with the importance of diagnostic tests, the main purpose of the article is to present clinical evidences of past diagnostic tests to prove to its target audeinces that the tests used on patients with schizophrenia is not accurate in terms of being able to explain the cognitive deficits in each patient. Since the article was published approximately 12 years ago, there is a strong possibility that a more reliable diagnostic test methods are now being used under the modern psychiatric practices. Authors’ Target Audiences The target audiences of the author includes not only the professional psychologist who are diagnosting and treating patients with schizophrenia but also psychology professors and students who are studying medical issues related to this particular mental illness. Type of Journal Being Examined Aiming to provide the generalist physicians, junior doctors, and medical students with a wide range of high quality medical reviews (British Medical Bulletin, 2008), the British Medical Bulletin has a good reputation in terms of being able to indirectly assist the medical practitioners with competitive clinical-based evidences that will enable the readers to have better idea and ways to improve and upgrade their existing knowledge and techniques used in their respective medical profession. As a way of carefully selecting articles that are published online by British Medical Bulletin, the said journal remains strict in terms of not accepting unsolicited journals aside from subjecting all articles submitted to the British Medical Bulletin to undergo the quality test of its editorial board members (British Medical Bulletin, 2008). Author’s Argument and Proposed Suitable Diagnostic Intervention Given that the patients’ treatment and the chances that these patients are going to recover from a particular disease is very much dependent on the patients’ diagnostic test results, diagnostic testing is considered a very sensitive matter which should be studied carefully. By effectively identifying the main causes that triggers the signs and symptoms that schizophrenia patients are showing, there is a higher chance that the neuropsychologists (together with the active participation of other health care practitioners) will be able to administer the most effective pharmacological drugs combined with the best psychology treatment that could enable the patient to gradually recover from the mental and cognitive abnormalities associated with the said disease. Significantly connected with brain dysfunction, schizophenia patients could either experience dilusions such as seeing images in their minds or hallucinations of voices (Frith, 1996). In line with the fact that the personal experiences of each schizophenia patients varies from one another, some patients have more serious impairment on the cerebrial cortex neurons which is responsible for the patients’ speech, moemory, and logical functioning whereas while others may show signs of severe damages in the temporal lobe which is responsible for the abnormal hearing hallucination of the patient or the somatic sensory area which is responsible for the patients’ accurate recognition of pain, coldness, or touch among others (Marieb, 2004: p. 217). In some clinical practices, the Wisconsin card sorting test is used in examinng the abnormal behavior of patients with schizophrenic (Elliot et al., 1995). Aside from other testing methods used in diagnosting schizophrenic patients, there are also some occasions wherein psychologists make their own set of experimental approaches to test degree of patients’ verbal hallucinations and delusions (Bentall & Baker, 1991; Frith et al., 1991). Upon discussing the limitations of these testing procedures, Frith (1996) publicly announced that “diagnosis used in patients with schizophrenia performs badly on neuropsychological tests”. With regards to the shorfall of these diagnostic tests used on patients with schizophrenia, Frith (1996) strongly concluded that the best way to test the patients’ mental condition is to conduct a primary investigation which focuses on determining the signs and symptoms that each patient is showing. Since each of Schizophrenic patients can either experience a series of either dilusions or hallucinations, I strongly agree with Frith’s (1996) conclusion that the diagnosis testing used on Schizophrenic patients should focus on examining the signs and symptoms that each patient is projecting and/or experiencing. In line with this matter, Schizophrenia.com (2008) – a non-profit organization that provides the general public with information related to schizophrenia verified that the claims of Frith (1996) is true such that “there is no single physical and/or lab test that can effectively diagnose a schizophrenia patient… therefore, psychiatrists diagnose patients using the list of gathered clinical symptoms.” Likewise, several studies also revealed the importance of analyzing the positive and negative signs and symptoms associated with schizophrenia when diagnosing a patient (Lahti et al., 2001; Putman & Harvey, 2000). For instance, it is possible for a Schizophrenic patients to experience hearing abnormal voices coming from unknown sources or even the possible negative emotions that the patient is experiencing. Considering the case of this particular group of patients, it would be unwise to rely only with the use of the Wisconsin card sorting test since this particular test is used only to examine purely the abnormal behavior of each patients with schizophrenic (Elliot et al., 1995). This particular test does not consider the fact that the patient is hearing hallucinating voices. Likewise, the use of this particular diagnostic testing is not capable of determining the mental capacity of each schizophrenic patients in terms of learning and other cognitive-related measurements. Although Frith (1996) was able to successfully explain the limitations of some testing methods used for diagnosting Schizophrenic patients, the author did not highlight all the possible diagnosting test such as the EEG and brain scans including the eye-tracking method, special IQ tests, as well as the blood and smell tests for schizophrenia patients (Schizophrenia.com, 2008) or even the use of virtual reality technology which has been recently designed to test and measure schizophranic patients’ behavior and working memory by playing virtual games (Sorkin et al., 2006). This is probably due to the fact that the selected article journal was written roughly 12 years ago. Conclusion Considering the main profession of the author of “Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia”, Frith (1996) is a highly qualfied writer. Although the author’s conclusion to focus on the signs and symptoms when testing a patient for schizophrenia is a highly acceptable recommendation, the fact that the selected article journal was written and published back in 1996 makes some of its information less reliable particularly with regards to the type of diagnostic testing used by the modern neuropsychologists when observing the mental health condition of patients with schizophrenia. Likewise, the type of journal wherein the article was officially published is also highly qualified in terms of having a good reputation as a source of medical information designed not only for the use of medical practitioners but also the professors and medical students. The selected article journal could have been better in case the author decided to tabulize and identify each particular diagnostic testing methods that was mentioned in the study including the specific limitations of each testing method. On the other hand, the overall information that was included in the study is considered informative in the sense that the article journal mentioned a lot of scientific-based information not only with regards to the testing of cognitive impairment which is commonly associated with the patients’ delusion as well as the hallucination of unidentified voices. *** End *** References: Bentall, R.P. and G.A. Baker. "Havers S. Reality monitoring and psychotic hallucinations. In Frith C. (ed) "Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia" British Medical Bulletin. 1996. Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 618 - 626." (1991). "BioInfoBank Library." 2008. List of Journals Written by Chris Frith. 19 October 2008 . "British Medical Bulletin." 2008. About the Journal. 19 October 2008 . Buenti, Domenica, et al. "Different Brain Circuits Underlie Motor and Perceptual Representations of Temporal Intervals." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2008): Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 204 - 214. Elliot, R., et al. "Neuropsychological evidence for frontostriatal dysfunction in schizophrenia. In Frith C. (ed) "Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia" British Medical Bulletin. 1996. Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 618 - 626." (1995). Frith, C.D., et al. "Disabilities and circumstances of schizophrenic patients-a follow-up study. IV. Performance on psychological tests: demographic and clinical correlates of the results of these tests. In Frith C. (ed) "Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia" British Medical Bulletin (1996): Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 618 - 626. Frith, Chris. "Editorial: In Praise of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry." Cognitive Neuropsychiatry (2008): Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 1 - 7. —. "Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia: What are the implications of intellectual and experiential abnormalities for the neurobiology of schizophrenia?" British Medical Bulletin (1996): Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 618 - 626. Lahti, Adrienne C., et al. "Abnormal Patterns of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow in Schizophrenia With Primary Negative Symptoms During an Effortful Auditory Recognition Task." American Journal of Psychiatry (2001): Vol. 158, No. 11, pp. 1797 - 1808. Marieb, E.N. Essentials of Human Anatomy & Physiology. 7th Edition. San Francisco, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 2004. Putman, Katherine M. and Philip D. Harvey. "Cognitive Impairment and Enduring Negative Symptoms: A Comparative Study of Geriatric and Nongeriatric Schizophrenia Patients." Schizophrenia Bulletin (2000): Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 867 - 878. "Schizophrenia.com." 2008. Schizophrenia Symptoms and Diagnosis of Schizophrenia . 19 October 2008 . Sorkin, Anna, et al. "Improving the Accuracy of the Diagnosis of Schizophrenia by Means of Virtual Reality." American Journal of Psychiatry (2006): Vol. 163, No. 3, pp. 512 - 520. "UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience." 15 July 2008. Prof. Chris Frith. 19 October 2008 . Read More