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AO1 (Description)
| Duration | Symptoms must last for at least one month. |
| Positive Symptoms | Added experiences, like hearing voices or having strange beliefs e.g. hallucinations and delusions. |
| Negative Symptoms | A loss of normal functions, like reduced motivation or emotion e.g. avolition and asociality. |
| Hallucinations | Hearing, seeing, or sensing things that aren’t real (e.g., hearing critical voices). |
| Delusions | Fixed false beliefs (e.g., grandiosity – “I’m a king”, or persecution – “I’m being spied on”). |
| Avolition | A severe lack of motivation or drive to do anything. |
| Asociality | A severe lack of interest in being with other people. |
AO3 (Evaluation)
| Individual and Situational Explanations | Point: A strength is its clear individual focus. Evidence: It diagnoses based on personal symptoms like avolition. Explanation: Directly lends to individual treatments like medication. Link: This improves application to everyday life. Counterpoint: However, it ignores critical situational factors like higher rates in urban poverty |
| Idiographic vs Nomothetic | Point: A strength is its standardised nomothetic approach. Evidence: It uses set symptom checklists for all patients. Explanation: This ensures consistent and fair assessment. Link: High reliability. Counterpoint: However, it overlooks the patient’s unique experience of symptoms e.g. delusion types not specified on the ICD-11. |
| Generalisations | Point: A weakness is poor cross-cultural generalisability. Evidence: e.g. Hearing voices may be a symptom or a spiritual experience. Explanation: This can lead to misdiagnosis in different cultures. Link: This reduces validity. Counterpoint: However, the ICD-11 does recommend considering cultural context. |
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