Schizophrenie und Chaos

Literaturangaben:

Tschacher W, Scheier C, & Hashimoto Y. (1997). Dynamical Analysis of Schizophrenia Courses. Biological Psychiatry, 41, 428-437.

oder auch:
Tschacher W, Scheier C, & Aebi E. (1996). Nichtlinearität und Chaos in Psychoseverläufen - eine Klassifikation der Dynamik auf empirischer Basis. Böker W, & Brenner HD, Integrative Therapie der Schizophrenie, (pp. 48-65). Göttingen: Hogrefe.

Abstract
In order to assess the working hypothesis that schizophrenia may be viewed as a nonlinear dynamical disease, we examined the long-term psychoticity dynamics of 14 patients. The data consist of daily ratings of psychopathology observed for 200 or more consecutive days in each patient. We implemented nonlinear dynamical analysis methods with a potential of being applicable even to relatively short and noisy time series: two different forecasting approaches combined with surrogate methods that allow statistical testing in each single case. The resulting classification of dynamics gives evidence that eight patients show nonlinear evolutions of symptom courses. Four cases can be modelled linearly, two as random processes. Thus, a larger proportion of the schizophrenic psychoses we studied shows nonlinear time courses. To our knowledge this is the first time that the validity of the concept of dynamical diseases could be established on statistical grounds in this important area of psychopathology. The nonlinear view - a low-dimensional nonlinear system generating psychotic symptoms - may provide the foundation for a more parsimonious theory of schizophrenia compared to traditional multicausal models. In several of the nonlinear cases we also observed the qualitative "fingerprint" of deterministic chaos: a decay of deterministic features of the course of disorder with time.
Keywords chaos, dynamical disease, forecasting, self-organization, schizophrenia, synergetics

weitere papers zum Thema:
Ciompi L. (1997). Sind schizophrene Psychosen dissipative Strukturen? Die Hypothese der Affektlogik. In: Schiepek G und Tschacher W (Hrsg.), Selbstorganisation in Psychologie und Psychiatrie, (pp. 191-217). Braunschweig: Vieweg.

Ciompi L, Ambühl B, & Dünki R. (1992). Schizophrenie und Chaostheorie. System Familie, 5, 133-147.

Schiepek G, & Schoppek W. (1992). Synergetik in der Psychiatrie: Simulation schizophrener Verläufe auf der Grundlage nichtlinearer Differenzengleichungen. Systeme, 6, 22-57.


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