Schizophrenia is a complex condition affecting the brain. At times how a person thinks, acts and feels may change dramatically and they may lose contact with reality. This is called psychosis. At other times, the person may feel depressed and withdraw from life. With treatment and support many people with schizophrenia manage their illness and lead regular lives. Schizophrenia doesn’t mean the person has a split personality. Their behaviour may change but this is due to the illness and not a ‘personality change’.*
Positive Symptoms:
The production or presence of behaviors those are grossly abnormal or excessive.
Hallucination:
- Visual
- Auditory
- Tactile
- Olfactory
- Gustatory
Delusion:
- Persecutory
- Reference
- Somatic
- Infidelity
- Grandeur
- Thought withdrawal/insertion/broadcasting
Disorganized or catatonic bizarre behavior:
- Unpredictable or inappropriate emotional responses
- Lack of inhibition and impulse control
Disorganized speech/thoughts
- Flight of ideas
- Thought blocking
- Clanging
- Loosening association
- Neologisms
- Perseveration
- Circumstantiality / Tangentially
Negative Symptoms:
Absence or deficits of normal emotional responses or of otherthought processes.
- Affective flattening
- Alogia: Poverty of speech
- Anhedonia: Inability to experience pleasure
- Asociality: Lack of interest or ability to socialize with people
- Avolition: Lack of motivation; the reduction or inability to initiate and persist in goal-directed behavior
- Apathy: Lack of feeling, emotion, interest or concern
More Information
- Schizophrenia Fellowship of New Zealand (SFNZ)
☎ Free phone 0800 500 363