Schizophrenia as a Mental Disorder
Positive and Negative Schizophrenia Symptoms, Schizophrenic Behavior
Mar 2, 2009
Each year, approximately 2.2 million Americans are diagnosed with the disorder known as schizophrenia.
There are four basic types of schizophrenic behavior; they include:
- Disorganized behavior
- Catatonic behavior
- Paranoid behavior
- Undifferentiated behavior
These four types of schizophrenic behavior should be considered when discussing schizophrenia since they have different symptoms, and different treatments.
Schizophrenia symptoms are divided into positive and negative according to their impact on treatment and diagnosis.
Positive Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Positive schizophrenia symptoms are caused by an excess or distortion of normal functions.
The diagnosis of schizophrenia requires observing two or more positive symptoms for at least a month. If hallucinations or delusions are very intense, they alone are enough to justify a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
The positive symptoms of schizophrenia include:
- Delusions. Delusions are inflexible misleading beliefs. They appear as a result of exaggerations or distortions of reasoning, as well as false interpretations of things and events. For example, one can think that some book was written especially for him/her.
- Hallucinations. Hallucinations are exaggerations or distortions of senses. Auditory hallucinations, when one can hear non-existent imaginary sounds, especially voices, are the most widely observed.
- Disorganized speech/thinking. This symptom is usually assessed based on the person’s speech. Disorganized thinking that results in disorganized, improperly associated, or inconsistent speech and poor communication abilities is a sign of the thought disorder.
- Disorganized behavior. This type of schizophrenic behavior is expressed when a person has difficulty performing everyday actions and activities. The individual’s behavior is unpredictable, silly, or strange; the odd behavior is usually caused by delusional beliefs.
- Catatonic behavior describes a lack of reaction to the external stimuli or events. Catatonic behavior includes absence of any reaction, inactivity, rigid and strange postures as a reaction to an external stimulus.
Other symptoms of schizophrenia are less common and when seen alone, these symptoms are not sufficient to diagnose schizophrenia. They include inappropriate reactions to a situation or stimuli, unusual motor behavior (inane pacing or rocking), depersonalization, derealization, and somatic preoccupations.
Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Negative schizophrenia symptoms are those that reflect a decrease in normal functions, or a loss of them. They may be observed in the lives of people with schizophrenia during the periods when positive symptoms are absent or poorly expressed.
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia are difficult to evaluate because they are not as apparent or as "abnormal" as positive symptoms.
- Affective flattening is usually expressed by the absence or reduction of emotional expression, such as mimicry, voice tone, eye contact and body language.
- Alogia is present when a person speaks very little and unproductively, or gives short and meaningless replies to questions due to slow or blocked thinking processes.
- Avolition is the absence of goal-oriented behavior. A person loses interest to the surrounding world, doesn't do anything, and sits doing nothing for long periods of time.
The symptoms of schizophrenia may be controlled with cognitive therapy intervention and medication that varies in price and individual effectiveness.
Learn more about schizophrenia, its types and causes, read Causes and Types of Schizophrenia.
Sources:
- Turner, Trevor. “Schizophrenia”. In G. Berrios & R. Porter (Eds.), A History of Clinical Psychiatry. London: Athlone Press, 1999.
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