There are many different specific signs and symptoms that will lead to the diagnosis of schizophrenia. These symptoms fall into twocategories, postive and negative symptoms.
Patients suffering from primarily positive symptoms are known to be experiencing the acute syndrome and those with mainly negative symptoms are knwon to be experiencing chronic syndrome.
Below are the lists of postive and negative symptoms.
Positive symptoms (obvious manifestations of schizophrenia):
1) Hallucinations
2) Auditory hallucinations-other forms of hallucination also exists, olfactory, gustatory, somatic and visual hallucination
3) Delusions- thought insertions, thought withdrawal, thought broadcasting
4) Thought disorder
5) Speech abnormalities
6) Emotional blunting
Under delusions, the patient believes that thoughts are inserted into his mind, causing confusion and disorientation: that they are being withdrawn, leaving his mind "blank" or that hostile outside force or device is causing his thoughts to be heard by others around him.
Negative symptoms (symptoms which feature the reduction or even obliteration of normal mental or behavioural processes):
1) Affective flattening or emotional blunting. This refers to the impairments in the ability to express emotions by both verbal and non-verbal methods.
2) Alogia. This relates to the impairment of speech. One common symptom in this category is poverty of speech, meaning that the patient says little and rarely initiates conversations. In other cases, his speech conveys no meaning, this symptom known as poverty of content of speech.
3) Avolition. This category describes a state in which the patient seems to almost to lack the will to act at all. They may respond to stimuli but do not react.
4) Anhedonia and asociality. Anhedonia refers to the inability to experience pleasure to a normal degree. Asociality refers to the avoidance of the company of others.
5) Catatonia. This is the most extreme form of negative symptoms, including negativism, mutism, waxy flexibility, posturing and catatonic stupor.
-Negativism refers to the refusal to comply with the most reasonable requests for no discernible reason.
-Mutism occurs when a patient refuses to speak
-Posturing occurs when the patient himself adopts an unusual, strangely contorted position for a considerable time.
Cases of schizophrenia can sometimes be classified according to the state the patients are in.
Subtypes of Schizophrenia:
1) Paranoid schizophrenics believe that they are the objects of persecutional plots by others.
2) Catatonic schizophrenia renders the patient withdrawn to the point of a virtual waking coma.
3) Hebephrenic schizophrenia is a condition in which the patient's emotions are disturbed and confused to the point where news of a death of a close relation is met with howls of laughter.
Schizophrenia as a neurodevelopment brain disorder
Schizophrenia is suggested to occur when abnormal genes lead to brain dysfunction. In some cases, environmental agents may be needed to start the process. The brain does not develop properly due to design faults in the genetic blueprint according to which it is built. Brain cells may not migrate properly during development. Some cells may be in the wrong place, some do not make necessary connections, while others make connections which should not occur. Studies shown that pre-schizophrenic brains are indeed abnormal. However, these studies do not explain the trend in which schizophrenia occurs, which is in late adolescence or early adulthood. However, this may be explained by the fact that the frontal cortex is one of the last areas of the brain to develop fully. When this and other brain areas cannot perform the functions necessary for people to cope with the transition to adulthood, schizophrenia occurs.
Schizophrenia can be treated by various ways. Below is a list of treatments used. These treatments are used differently depending on the patient.
Treatment:
1) Psychotherapy
2) Drug therapy
3) Family therapy
4) Identifying stresses that trigger the psychotic episodes
On to the next disorder- Neurities
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