Define schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a complicated mental illness which affects roughly 1% of the population. Schizophrenia symptoms are categorized in three groups - positive, negative and cognitive. Keep in mind that not every schizophrenic will experience every symptom, and that there’s just as many different ways to experience schizophrenia as there’s schizophrenic people.
Positive symptoms (positive as in “added to” - meaning things schizophrenic people may experience which neurotypicals don’t):
Delusions. A delusion is a fixed belief that doesn’t fit into societal and cultural norms that doesn’t change when confronted with a contradicting reality. Delusions can take many different forms and can be everything from “people can read my mind” to “I’m being stalked by the government” to “I’m being possessed by demons” to “I’m the next Jesus.”
Hallucinations. Hallucinations means experiencing sensory input that isn’t actually there. They can be both tactile (feeling touches that aren’t there - example: feeling that bugs are crawling on you when there isn’t any bugs), auditory (hearing voices or other sounds that aren’t there), visual (seeing things that aren’t there), olfactory (smelling things that aren’t there) and gustatory (to do with taste - example: having food taste rotten when it’s actually perfectly fine.)
Disorganized thinking/behavior as in a lacking ability to organize ones thoughts and a resulting lack of ability to speak, act and express yourself normally. A person suffering from disorganized thinking may speak or act in obviously bizarre ways that doesn’t make sense to other people.
Negative symptoms (negative as in “removed from” meaning that these are symptoms which are defined by being things most people experience which people with schizophrenia may lack):
Apathy. Apathy is the loss of interest in things that used to interest a person. This includes both jobs, hobbies, relationships and personal hygiene. (A person may go from being passionate about their job to laying in bed all day.)
Inappropriate or lacking emotional responses. (A person may not react emotionally to things that most people would react emotionally to or may have an inappropriate emotional response - some examples could be laughing at a family members funeral or smiling at bad news or not reacting at all to hearing that someone died.)
Lack of speech. (A person may go from speaking normally to giving one word answers or not speaking at all.)
Social withdrawal. (A person may lose all interest in socializing and start isolating themselves from their friends and family members.)
Anhedonia. Anhedonia is the lack of ability to feel pleasure as in no longer getting positive emotional responses from anything and feeling empty and grey when doing things that used to make you happy. (A person may go from really loving reading to not getting any enjoyment out of doing it.)
Sexual problems. (A person may lose their interest in sex partly or completely.)
Lethargy. Lethargy means lack of energy. (A person may go from being able to go to school every day to not being able to get out of bed.)
Impaired attention. (A person may struggle to follow conversations and focus on reading or television, etc).
Cognitive symptoms:
Loss of long and short term memory. People with schizophrenia may struggle to remember things they’re supposed to remember more often than neurotypicals. (A person may frequently forget about plans, appointments and other things they’re supposed to do - and they may struggle to recall relevant information when they need it.)
Loss of working memory. Working memory is our ability to actively process and use information in the moment. (A person with impaired working memory may be slower at comprehending what’s happening around them or what they’re supposed to do in a given situation.)
Loss of ability to concentrate/focus. People with schizophrenia may have a hard time focusing on tasks and may be easily distracted. (A person may find themselves reading the same sentence over and over without comprehending anything because they can’t focus on actually processing the information they’re reading despite wanting and needing to.)
Loss of executive functioning. Executive functioning is a term for our ability to plan, start, perform and finish a certain task, so someone with executive dysfunction may often struggle to figure out how to go from wanting to do something to actually doing it. (A person may know that they need to do the laundry, but they can’t figure out how to get from “dirty laundry” to “clean laundry” because their brain can’t see all the individual steps. They know that they need to get from A to F - but they can’t see B, C, D and E, and may thus get stuck and be unable to perform the task.)
Learning difficulties. People with schizophrenia may struggle to learn and remember new skills and information. (A person may already have asked how to use the microwave 5 times, but every time someone explains it they end up forgetting how to do it and having to ask again.)
