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Types And Symptoms Of Schizophrenia  

 

by Mike Selvon

Schizophrenia is a form of psychosis that shifts sufferers from reality to an often terrifying world of delusions, confusion, and hallucinations. Often the symptoms of schizophrenia are described as "positive" or "negative."

Positive and Negative Symptoms

Positive symptoms, such as delusions, hallucinations, 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 are ongoing, while at other times patients suffer from schizophreniform disorder.

Types of Schizophrenia

There are five different types of schizophrenia.

The first and most common type is paranoid schizophrenia. People with paranoid schizophrenia suffer delusions and sometimes hallucinations. They believe someone is trying to harm them.

For instance, the patient may believe that the government is spying on him, that people on television or animals are talking to him, or that someone is trying to deliberately hurt him. Often, people with paranoid schizophrenia also suffer an accompanying anxiety disorder that causes heightened fear, nervous twitches and displeasure. Other patients have delusions of grandeur, and believe they are great inventors or a celebrities.

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," nonsense 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, or freezing without moving for long periods of time.

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, residual schizophrenia is diagnosed in 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 are caused by genetics and brain chemistry or environmental factors.

The good news is that anti-psychotic drugs and therapy are usually very effective in treating the symptoms, and allow many sufferers to live a relatively normal life.

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