Schizophrenia is an extreme brain disorder that often makes people struggle to distinguish between what is real and unreal. They lose their ability to think clearly, express emotions, and perform daily activities normally. Schizophrenia changes the way of thinking and normal behavior. The conditions may develop slowly and it is hard to diagnose in the initial stage.
There are various kinds of schizophrenia like Paranoid schizophrenia, Hebephrenic schizophrenia, Catatonic schizophrenia and much more categorized based on behaviors and symptoms of the patients. The different episodes of schizophrenia show different level of symptoms. During the early phase of schizophrenia, you may show unusual behavior, emotionless, and socially isolated.
Immediately after detecting schizophrenia symptoms in your loved ones, you can contact A Mission for Michael (AMFM) for an intensive treatment in Southern California and Virginia. They have highly-specialized team of doctorate and master’s level to treat mental disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, addiction and much more. They also provide insurance assistance.
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Generally, you may give up your hobbies and activities, and you start to underperform at work or school. The symptoms of schizophrenia vary greatly from person to person with respect to pattern and severity.
Here are few major symptoms of schizophrenia –
Table of Contents
1. Psychosis
Generally, schizophrenia is termed as a psychotic disorder. People with schizophrenia have disrupted functions of mind and shows abnormal behaviors of psychosis. In psychosis, a person’s perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions appear to become unreal.
2. Positive Symptoms
Positive symptoms are those symptoms that are present only in schizophrenia patients and relate to the change in behaviors and thoughts alone.
These symptoms can include things like delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior.
- Delusions – Delusions are the false but strong beliefs held by the patient. It arises based on unrealistic or strange view which patients consider to be true and real. They may start imagining that they are being followed, watched, and plotted for poisoned by a family member or friend.
- Hallucinations – Hallucinations are false experiences like seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or feeling things that do not happened in real. Hallucinations may appear very real to the person with schizophrenia whereas people around them cannot experience anything.
- Disorganized Speech and behavior – The speech and the language of schizophrenia patients are not linked together and can be difficult or impossible to understand. Laughing for no reason and at unsuitable times is a disorganized behavior.
3. Negative Symptoms
Here, the patient withdraws interest from social interactions and emotions.
Below are the examples of negative symptoms –
- Flattened Affect – People with schizophrenia have flattened affect like emotionless or disappearing feelings.
- Anhedonia – People show a lack of joy and pleasure that they used to enjoy earlier.
- Reduced Speech – They speak less fluently than before.
- Lack of motivation – They lose motivation and interest in their life and daily activities.
4. Cognitive Symptoms
These are related to brain of the patient. They lack concentration perception, and face memory problems. Completing a task or activity becomes difficult or impossible for them.
