Psychotic Disorders

Schizophrenia

Schizotypal personality disorder:

3.1B-C (By-prod. Sociab. Dis.)

Schizophrenia:

2.1B-D (Environ. Dysreg. Dis.)

A Disorder of Spacing? Stevens & Price (2000) describe schizophrenia as a "spacing" disorder. They argue that the genetic tendency towards schizophrenia evolved in the context of rapid group splitting, group elimination, externally medicated sexual selection, facilitated and contributed to the evolution of language. They suggest that the schizotypal genotype is an adaptation whose function is to facilitate group splitting, achieved by the formation of a subgroup (or ...

Dec/Jan 2017 NSW Branch Newsletter

Welcome to the summer super bumper edition of my column. I promise a sunnier read than you are used to from me, as I’d like to share some great advances we have made this year. We are finally beginning to ‘reap the harvest’ from our persistent efforts to engage in proactive and quality advocacy, networking and submissions to the NSW Mental Health Ministry.

A critical area of determined focus of the Branch over this past year has been to identify gaps undercutting quality and efficient clinical governance, leadership and workforce capacities within the mental health system. We know that there i...

Feb/Mar 2018 NSW Branch Newsletter

I’m on the home stretch of my second (and last) term in this role. That leaves one more newsletter to go after this column! This is my time to begin some reflection about the most salient experience of my professional life: representing you, my NSW colleagues, to lead positive change these past four years.

There have been some difficult moments – because, to have any chance of actually seeing change occur in the current political climate (rather than engage in lots and lots of talking in meetings that go somewhere in the vague direction of their title but don’t somehow seem to reach any concre...

Metaphorical models - Anxiety Disorders

Introduction

Anxiety is adaptive. It drives the athlete, motivating them to compete, to train, to perform and to win. It drives the student to attend lectures, to read boring textbooks, to study and to pass. They may be anxious about failure, about humiliation, about losing self-esteem, losing confidence, losing momentum, about letting others down, or merely anxious to chase success. There are numerous fears that might trigger anxiety that is adaptive as it helps to drive some behaviour that is deemed adaptive for the individual.

Panic attacks

Anxiety may also be triggered by danger, by t...

Anxiety Disorders

A (Attach. Arch. Disr.)

Bowlby considered care-eliciting, care-giving, competitive power-seeking and cooperating as derivatives and developmental expressions of the affiliation & bonding archetype. Neurotic illness may occur due to deficient parental care frustrating archetypal anticipations, as maturation proceeds through a sequence of innate expectations which the environment either fulfils or fails to meet.

1.1A (Mod. Malf. Dis. / Attach. Arch. Disr.)

Schore (2002) argues that the predisposition for arousal dysregulation under stress in those with anxiety disorders, results from dysregulati...