The symptoms of schizophrenia are classified in two groups: positive and negative symptoms. The positive symptoms refer to those characters which come as a supplementary to the patient's personality and consist out of disordered thinking and psychotic symptoms. The negative symptoms refer to those characters which disappear due to schizophrenia, like loosing emotion and expression. These negative symptoms are the first to appear in a schizophrenic person.
Schizophrenia makes the affected people not to manifest any emotion any more; they do not enjoy the things that used to give them satisfaction like going out with friends, going swimming, golfing or playing tennis. Because they have a lack of motion and show little face expression they do not have many friends and do not make friends so easily.
They often have problems at school or at work because they can not focus any more, they have a lack of motivation and they process information with difficulty.
Many people who observe these changes in close persons think that this is due to other health problems, to depression or substance abuse and do not think about schizophrenia.
The category of positive symptoms contains hallucinations meaning that the affected person might hear voices, might see things which are not present, or might even smell something that is not there.
Some schizophrenic people might believe that they are sent by God and that they have a special mission which needs to be completed soon; others might think they are the US President and are not easy to convince that this is not true.
These people are confused, they can not answer properly to a question, and they have a strange way of speaking which makes them hardly understood by others. Sometimes they answer questions with one word, like yes or no, and they are not sociable people, avoiding new acquaintances and strangers.
They have a non-organized behavior, they are sometimes very nervous and agitated without a proper reason and they have disorganized body movements like rocking in the chair back and forth for a long time.
They do not take care of themselves any more, they get dirty but they do not take a bath for weeks, they do not wash their clothes and leave their house unclean until it makes that space impossible to live in.
People consider them mean and strange because they have inappropriate behaviors like smiling or laughing at a funeral, in an inappropriate moment or without a specific reason. In some cases, more rarely jerking eye movements can occur.
Schizophrenic symptoms appear depending on the type of schizophrenia a person has. In the case of paranoid schizophrenia, the patient might be constantly afraid due to the fact that a problem with interpreting the reality has occurred. Catatonic schizophrenic people stand in a strange uncomfortable position for a long time; the disorganized schizophrenic patients create a language that nobody understands or even create rhyming words continuously. A more rare form of schizophrenia is the Childhood schizophrenia which causes a lack of emotion, disorganized speech, and hallucinations.
Schizophrenia is a form of psychosis that shifts sufferers from reality to an often terrifying world of delusions, confusion, danger and hallucination. Often the symptoms of schizophrenia are described as "positive" or "negative." Positive symptoms, such as delusions, hallucinations, thought disorders and involuntary movements may come and go.
Negative symptoms refer to reductions in normal behavior, such as a monotonous voice, emotionless facial expression, a lack of pleasure, infrequent speech, poor hygiene and the inability to execute a plan. Sometimes, symptoms occur constantly, while at other times patients suffer from schizophreniform disorder.
There are five different types of schizophrenia, according to schizophrenia research, and the symptoms vary. The first type and the most common is paranoid schizophrenia. The paranoid schizophrenic suffers bizarre delusions and sometimes auditory hallucinations.
For instance, the patient may believe that the government is spying on them, that people on television or animals are talking to them, or that someone is trying to deliberately hurt them. Often, paranoid schizophrenics also suffer an accompanying anxiety disorder that causes heightened fear, nervous twitches and displeasure. Other patients have delusions of grandeur, and believe they are a great inventor or a celebrity.
Strange emotional responses characterize the second type, which is called disorganized schizophrenia. Symptoms of schizophrenia for this type may include emotionless facial display, a monotone voice, or the inability to laugh, cry and show any emotion. Sufferers may exhibit signs of "psychomotor poverty," disrupted speech patterns, a lack of spontaneous movement or motivation, derailment, thought disturbances and reality distortion.
The third type is called catatonic schizophrenia, which is the stereotypical view of a person rocking back and forth in a strait jacket, staring vapidly -- sometimes rambling incessantly, or at other times being completely mute. The symptoms of this type may include making jerky, bizarre movements, with arms and legs flailing about for no reason. The catatonic schizophrenic is incapable of caring for him or herself and is characterized as having a very severe mental illness.
The fourth type is referred to as undifferentiated schizophrenia, meaning that the symptoms cannot definitively classify the disorder as one type or another. Some patients show all the different symptoms or a few from each category. These patients sometimes lack catatonia, paranoia and disorganized speech, but may instead exhibit symptoms of a neurological disorder.
Lastly, the residual schizophrenic is someone who may have a past history, but currently exhibits no positive symptoms -- like delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech or bizarre behavior. Sometimes residual schizophrenia occurs during a transition from diagnosed schizophrenia to remission, and other times no psychotic episodes occur for years.
Roughly, one out of every one thousand people develops a schizophreniform disorder - meaning that they exhibit a short term form of schizophrenia. Two thirds of the people with the disorder go on to develop a life-long mental illness.
These symptoms of schizophrenia can be caused by genetics, brain chemistry or environmental factors. Some people are literally pushed to the brink of insanity due to stress from social interactions. Others have an imbalance of neurotransmitters that may lead to disorganization in the brain.
To treat schizophrenia of any type, the good news is that taking an anti-psychotic schizophrenia drug is usually very effective in treating the symptoms, and allows most sufferers to live a relatively normal life.
Both Groshan Fabiola & Mike Selvon are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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