What are the symptoms of schizophrenia?

What are the symptoms of schizophrenia?

Christopher Reist (Academic Psychiatrist, Co-Author of “Psychiatry”) gives expert video advice on: What are the most common dangers associated with schizophrenia?; How will a psychiatrist determine whether I suffer from schizophrenia?; What are the common treatments for schizophrenia? and more...

The symptoms of schizophrenia can be divided into a couple of different categories. These groups include positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. I don't mean positive or negative in a good or bad sense, but more of the presence or absence of certain features. The positive symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, and changes in the ability to think logically about ideas. Hallucinations are perceptions of various sensory functions that occur, such as a voice when there's nobody around. Delusions are fixed beliefs that a person strongly holds to even when there's evidence to the contrary. Finally, the ability to think logically refers to putting together ideas in a coherent manner to really express a complex concept. People with schizophrenia often have a great deal of difficulty with that. The second group of symptoms are the negative symptoms and this means more a lack of certain features that are normally present in a person. Negative symptoms include anhedonia, or the ability to enjoy normal, pleasurable activities. We see deficits in speech; typically, people with schizophrenia have speech that is brief and doesn't really amount to a lot. We also see problems with motivation; often patients with schizophrenia have difficulty starting or sustaining new activities. The final cluster of symptoms is what we call cognitive deficits and these refer to a variety of mental processes, such as attention, memory, and the ability to make judgments.