Abstract
The present portfolio includes three dossiers: academic, clinical/professional and research. The academic dossier consists of two literature reviews. The first, titled "the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy in the reduction of positive symptomatology in schizophrenia" reviews the results of recent studies on the application of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in schizophrenia and evaluates the extent of which the approach contributes to the treatment of the disorder. The second review, titled "the value of schizotypy in enhancing our understanding of schizophrenia" looks at evidence from different areas of current schizotypy research in order to evaluate the advantages of the concept of schizotypy as an alternative method for investigating schizophrenia. The study included in the clinical/professional dossier investigates the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy in the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as derived from the clinic in the Adult Section of the Psychology Department at Barnet NHS Trust. The results of the study support the hypotheses that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy contributes significantly to the reduction of PTSD symptomatology especially in people who sought help soon after their traumatic experience. The research dossier includes the findings of a research study in which it investigates cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, as described by Hemsley and colleagues (1987), using the behavioural phenomenon of reversal learning. The performance of normal controls (n=40), chronic schizophrenics (n=34) and acute schizophrenics (n=31) on this task appeared to support the hypothesis that acute schizophrenics less influenced by previous learning tend to shift faster than chronic schizophrenics and normal controls at the outset of reversal. However, the same findings also point out to the difficulty experienced by this group of subjects to maintain their attention, and consequently their response, to the selected stimulus for prolonged periods of time.