Labeling of mental ill people The mentally disturbed people are still nowadays afraid of theire illness. By then they don´t either concede, that they need help from psychiatrists. They become so anxiuos, that they could be legitimately, stigmatized by the rest of the people, which means, that could be labelled as irresponsible, dull, incalculate and dangerous. In Czech Republic it still happens, that as a result of labeling people find hard to get and mantain theire jobs, housing and overvaluation of illnes by doctors. In Czech Republic there is still not a specific law, which could safeguard the rights of mentally ill people hence make it easier for intergrating them. The aim of this thesis, which was dividen into three partial aims, was to map problems of mentally ill people. In my opinion, this aim of work was fulfilled To it´s fulfillment it was composed with two questionnaires. The first inquiry survey was done on the students from University of Southern Bohemia, by which was tested the knowledge of probles of mentally ill people and their attitude towards these people. The second group of surveyed inquiry have been comprised of psychiatristic clients in České Budějovice and Písek, by which was established their personal point of view about the extent of labeling that is reverberating in their qualiy life. The achievement of the aims was based on three the hypothesis. The first one was about the personal view of clients on experienced stigmatization, which is beeing noticed by the stages of discrimination in their quality way of life. The second one was engaged in insufficient knowledge of students based on law statues of mentally ill people and the third one on integration of mentally ill people into other population. Only the first hypothesis was validated.

The work deals with a mental illness called schizophrenia. The thesis consists of two parts, the theoretical part and the practical part. The theoretical part has five chapters, it has focused mainly on the interconnectedness of social work, psychiatry, psychology and ethics. First, it describes schizophrenia in general - how begins the illness, it signs and symptoms, diagnosis, course and prognosis and treatment options. I am focusing on the psychiatric aspects of schizophrenia, the social aspect of the disease and the ethics codes of various disciplines. The practical part is research, which is based on the interpretation of the results of a quantitative research. I opted a questionnaire as a research technice. The aim of this questionnaire is to find out which general knowledges has the adult population about schizophrenia and which views of schizophrenia are prevailing.

Cognitive deficit is now considered to be a core feature of schizophrenia, which significantly influences psychosocial functioning in individuals with this illness. The aim of this study is to analyze the cognitive performance during the first year after the first episode of the illness and cognition related to psychosocial functioning. A total of 28 people hospitalized after the first psychotic episode of schizophrenia F20 according to ICD-10 participated in our study and underwent measurements of cognitive functions by the international MCCB battery. They were also evaluated by the PANSS (Scale of positive and negative symptoms) and PSP (range of personal and social performance). After one year from the first measurement for re-examination, 20 patients made an appearance. In 75% of the sample (n = 28), a cognitive deficit below 1.5 standard deviations below the normative average, i.e. below 35 T-score, was detected, at least in one of the measured domains. Speed of processing was the most impaired domain (T < 35), Reasoning and problem solving was the least attenuated domain (T > 40). The resulting analysis (paired t-test) showed a significant improvement one year after first-episode schizophrenia in domains Speed of processing (p = 0,018) and Reasoning and problem solving (p = 0,023). The...

Mirror neurons are a specific kind of visuomotor neurons that are involved in action execution and also in action perception. The mirror mechanism is linked to a variety of complex psychological functions such as social-cognitive functions and language. People with schizophrenia have often difficulties both in mirror neuron system and in language skills. In the first part of our research we studied the connectivity of mirror neuron areas (such as IFG, STG, PMC, SMC and so on) by fMRI in resting state and the differences between a group of patients during first episode psychosis and a group of healthy controls. The second part of our research was dedicated to language: if there are specific activations in certain parts of the cortex (such as SMC, Broca's and Wernicke's areas) along with a specific meaning of the word stimuli and if these activations are disrupted in patients with schizophrenia. The first part of the research showed a significant difference in the mirror neuron system connectivity between these two groups. The patients had stronger connections between the thalamus (which mediates sensory information) and the cortical areas while the controls had the cortical areas more interconnected. The second part of our research, a language experiment, showed significant differences between the...

Objectives: The aim of this non-interventional observational study was to determine the nutritional statu s of long-term hospitalized pacients in a psychiatric hospital using anthropometric indicators of nutritional status. Assess the presence of overweight, obesity and pathological waist circumference in patients with schizophrenia. Evaluate the incidence of malnutrition and risk of its development in patients with dementia. Methods: The data were obtained by measuring the selected patients in Psychiatric hospital Kosmonosy, were collected data on body weight, arm circumference, waist and calf. Data were completed by information from nursing records - body height of the patient, age, length of hospital stay and used antipsychotic medication. The data of weight and height were used to calculated BMI. Results: The study included a total of 121 patients, of whom 56 (46.28 %) men and 65 (53.72 %) women. Patients were divided into two groups by diagnosis, the first group of schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorders (93 patients) and another group with a diagnosis of dementia (28 patients). In the first group, the incidence of overweight was present in 26.88 % of patients, obesity in 25.81 % of patients and abdominal obesity was present in 79.57 % of patients. The highest average BMI, the prevalence...

D I S E R T A Č N Í P R Á C E Autor: Mgr. Jiří Motl Spiritualita a duševní nemoc Role spirituality v životě lidí se zkušeností s psychotickým onemocněním Spirituality and Mental Disorder: The Role of Spirituality in the Lives of People with Experience of Psychosis Abstract The dissertation investigates the relationship of mental illness and religion. It focuses on the role of spirituality in people with experience of psychosis. In the theoretical part, the problem of drawing the line between pathological and normal spirituality is discussed, stressing the importance of a functional point of view and the need for a dialogic relationship with the ill person. The theoretical part goes on with mapping the potential of spirituality in the recovery process. Spirituality often helps the afflicted to perceive their illness as a meaningful process, making it easier to cope with the illness. At the end of the theoretical part, four alternative or complementary conceptual frameworks are presented. The empirical part consists of a qualitative research of nine subjects (believers with the experience of psychosis). The data collection and analysis is based mainly in the IPA method (interpretative phenomenological analysis). The research aims to map how mental illness affected the subjects' spirituality and vice versa....

Schizophrenia is accompanied by distortion of all mental functions, including thinking, speech, motivation, perception or general experiencing of the world and oneself. Theoretical part of the thesis describes the process of schizophrenia and its symptoms with focus on auditory hallucinations, which roughly 70% of people with schizophrenia have some experience with. Main contribution of the theoretical part is the summary of the self- disturbances concept, which incorporates for instance loss of control over parts of mental experience, disruption of boundaries between the person and its surroundings and other similar aspects that are for a person who never experienced them almost unimaginable, and are difficult to explain even for an individual who does experience these disturbances of oneself. The thesis puts theoretical outcomes of self-disturbances into perspective, as well as current approaches and knowledge. First part of the research validates that the newly developed method for measurement of self-disturbances acquires sufficient internal consistency. Results of the next part confirm that the self-disturbances measure varies among patients with schizophrenia and healthy volunteers in all of the individual domains. Last research part presents relationships between currently experienced...

The diploma thesis deals with the topic of neurocognitive changes in schizophrenia and the possibility of non-pharmacological interventions. It first summarizes current knowledge about schizophrenia, in connection with interdisciplinary overlaps enabling orientation in the topic. The thesis describes the individual cognitive disorders that are part of the disease. The main focus of the work is to inform about the possibilities of cognitive remediation. We focus on cognitive training and transcranial direct current stimulation in more detail. In particular, the use of stimulation methods has not yet been described in Czech literature. The work should thus contribute to the mapping of this issue. The theoretical part is followed by an empirical presentation of the results of our pilot study. In the study, we use a quantitative-qualitative methodology to map objective and subjective changes in cognitive functions before and after the application of stimulation and cognitive training in patients with schizophrenia. We included 9 patients who met the entry criteria. The results of the quantitative part did not reveal significant changes after the application of active tDCS stimulation in combination with cognitive training. The qualitative part of the study described subjectively perceived changes and...

The diploma thesis deals with the topic of neurocognitive changes in schizophrenia and the possibility of non-pharmacological interventions. It first summarizes current knowledge about schizophrenia, in connection with interdisciplinary overlaps enabling orientation in the topic. The thesis describes the individual cognitive disorders that are part of the disease. The main focus of the work is to inform about the possibilities of cognitive remediation. We focus on cognitive training and transcranial direct current stimulation in more detail. In particular, the use of stimulation methods has not yet been described in Czech literature. The work should thus contribute to the mapping of this issue. The theoretical part is followed by an empirical presentation of the results of our pilot study. In the study, we use a quantitative-qualitative methodology to map objective and subjective changes in cognitive functions before and after the application of stimulation and cognitive training in patients with schizophrenia. We included 9 patients who met the entry criteria. The results of the quantitative part did not reveal significant changes after the application of active tDCS stimulation in combination with cognitive training. The qualitative part of the study described subjectively perceived changes and...

Dissertation thesis Semiotics of schizophrenia aims to analyse manifestations of the symptoms of schizophrenia from the point of view of semiotics. The goal is to find common features of otherwise heterogeneous manifestations of schizophrenia and the features that make them abnormal. The method of the thesis is semiotic reduction, i.e. approach to phenomena as to sings and significations, which approach is based on the semiotic theory of Charles Peirce. The proposed thesis characterises symptoms of schizophrenia as a disorder of indexical relation between a sign-object and the group of signs of the Self. An object can be a voice or an image in the case of hallucinations, a proposition in the case of delusions, a rule of communication in the case of disorganization of speech or behaviour or a habitus in the case of negative symptoms. Abnormality of the manifestations of schizophrenia is due to a disorder of indexical relation between signs of the Self, which have features as indisprovability or basis for interpreting the world, and these objects. The author compares conclusions of the thesis with clinical studies and so called unifying theories of schizophrenia.