Please read carefully and reply to this 2 student. The replies must be substantive, must reflect an understanding of the week’s material, and must further the academic quality of the discussion. Simply telling a classmate that you agree with them or applauding them for a “Great job on this week’s Discussion!!!” is not enough for full credit.
Question:
Report to the Board on the case study that you selected for this week’s assignment. It does not need to be in great depth, but enough that the Board understands what construct / phenomenon you have chosen, and understands the issues involved with the case study.
Cite the academic / scholarly source that you locate for the case study.
Fisrt Student:
The case study I chose is about psychosis and how it can be induced from stimulants. In this case, an 18 year old man was sent to the hospital after his parents noticed his change in behavior. He started to become anti-social, irritable, and paranoid. His parents called the cops after he started screaming at them. When he arrived at the hospital, he became violent and tried to attack the staff with a knife, believing that they were trying to hurt him. In the end, he ended up falling asleep, and afterward, they were able to help him. It was found out that he was taking prescription medication for ADHD. He was taking lisdexamfetamine dimesylate with a dosage of 60mg alongside several dextroamphetamine sulfate tablets of 10 mg. He had no family history of mental illness, no prior drug use, and no prior mental illness. After a urine test, he tested positive for amphetamines. The stimulant medications were discontinued by the hospital afterward.
The pathways in the brain that are altered by stimulants are important for cognitive functions, reward processing, and motivations. When they are altered, the result would be positive symptoms such as psychosis. This is important to note because people who may be experiencing psychosis are acting out in that way due to a specific dosage. People who have already been diagnosed with schizophrenia have actually been shown to have more psychotic episodes with stimulant use. It seems that those who have a higher vulnerability like individuals with schizophrenia require lower dosages in order to avoid the increase of psychotic episodes There are also people who are susceptible to getting psychosis through amphetamine use if they have specific genetic biomarkers.
The reason I chose this article was because psychosis can appear in individuals in different ways. Not only because of some mental illness that they may already have, but it can also be due to malpractice. Their have also been several cases in which we have studied through the semester about individuals who were off their medication suffering from a form of psychosis but this article opens up another possibility of individuals having psychosis due to an overdose.
Henning, A., & Kurtom, M., & Espiridion, E. (2019) A Case Study of Acute Stimulant-Induced Psychosis. Cureus, U.S. National Library of Medicine. 10.7759/cureus.4126
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483113/
Second student:
I chose to examine a case study that addresses bipolar disorder and the use of melatonin as a form of treatment for a 10-year-old boy diagnosed with the disorder. Insomnia is a common issue with those diagnosed, which has caused further research into treatment that targets the one’s circadian rhythm and notes its effects on mania. The boy, referred to as M.B., had previously not responded to other methods of treatment, including lithium, carbamazepine, and valproic acid, which led to the implementation of melatonin to solve such side effects. M.B. had first started showing symptoms of bipolar disorder at age 4, with episodes that involved insomnia and many other significant factors, and was later officially diagnosed at age 5. His manic episodes continued, despite attempts at treatment, until age 8 when he started taking melatonin daily, later in combination with alprazolam. Even though the dosage had to be upped occasionally, melatonin seemed to have benefitted M.B. and regulated his hypothesized dysfunction in the production and/or secretion of melatonin. Robertson & Tanguay (1997) do note that at the time of this case study, the long-term effects of such dosages are still unknown, but this information could be helpful for all ages in the future.
Robertson, J. M., & Tanguay, P. E. (1997). Case study: The use of melatonin in a boy with refractory bipolar disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 36(6), 822-825. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-199706000-00020