subject: Positive And Negative Symptoms Of Schizophrenia [print this page] Positive and negative symptoms are common characteristic of a Schizophrenia patient. This article will discuss both in greater detail.
Positive Symptoms
Positive symptoms define all symptoms which are more specific to Schizophrenic patients and are not normally experienced by healthy individuals. These symptoms pertain to loss of touch with the real life. Positive symptoms can be either severe or mild which are unnoticeable by people around. Positive systems include delusions, illusions, hallucinations and having nebulous thinking.
Negative Symptoms
Negative symptoms define all symptoms that can occur in any healthy individual in response to certain emotional or physical setback. Negative symptoms are not blatantly noticeable and are hard to identify. Different instances of negative symptoms are:
1. Dullness in the mood and voice of a person: The person may not display any expressions on his face and speak in a monotonous tone.
2. Depression and loss of pleasure in day to day life: The person loses interest in any activity, feels hopeless, helpless, miserable and pathetic, experiences guilt, and has constant self depreciation thoughts in his mind. Such a person does not feel enthusiastic or interested in anything in spite of rewards, recognitions or encouragement.
3. Lack of concentration in the activities of day to day life: The person is not motivated, undergoes loss of enthusiasm and loses concentration in many activities.
4. Emotional imbalance and social withdrawal: The person experiences lack of emotion and loses connection with his loved ones. The person is unable to respond to any external emotional stimuli. He is likely to show emotions at the wrong time, for example, crying at a wedding and laughing at a funeral. He prefers to be alone and tries to escape the situation when he is encouraged to communicate with others.
5. Failure to articulate: As the frontal lobe of the brain is affected in Schizophrenia, the person's ability to articulate and understand things or complex issues is severely hampered.
6. Ineffective in planning, organizing and performing simple instructions: The person is unable to perform planning or organize things in an orderly manner. He experiences difficulty even in organizing his own thoughts, expressing or communicating them to others. Hence it becomes very difficult for a normal individual to understand a Schizophrenic patient who sounds very confusing, illogical and unclear in certain situations. Schizophrenic patients can also face difficulty in following instructions to perform straightforward tasks.
7. Loss of appetite: The person has loss of appetite and does not feel like eating even if he has not had any food for long and his body requires it.
8. Lack of personal hygiene: The person becomes very lazy and seems like he cannot take care of himself. He will even neglect his personal grooming like bathing and cleaning himself.
9. Violent behaviors: Generally, this symptom is observed only in Schizophrenic patients who have been short tempered or who have committed crimes in the past. In cases of Schizophrenia patients, these violent behaviors worsen.
10. Talking about self destruction: The person might talk about committing suicide. When such incident happens, the patient must be taken seriously and medical attention is needed immediately.
