Schizophrenia is a severe and debilitating mental illness that can be treated and managed in order to live a functional life. The National Institute of Mental Health states that about one percent of Americans suffer from schizophrenia. It has three distinct stages, prodromal, which is the beginning stage, active and residual. During the active stage of schizophrenia, the symptoms can be categorized as positive symptoms, negative symptoms and cognitive symptoms.
Positive Symptoms
In schizophrenia, positive symptoms refer to psychotic behaviors that are not normally experienced by people who are mentally fit. The primary examples of positive symptoms are hallucinations, delusions and thought and movement disorders. The hallucinations experienced can include seeing and hearing people or things that are not actually present. The Center for Addiction and Mental Health states that schizophrenic type delusions may involve false or obsessive beliefs that are irrational in context to the person's culture and have no factual basis. Common examples of movement disorders experienced by someone with active schizophrenia are repetitive motions and catatonia, which is an excessively stiff body posture.
Negative Symptoms
Harvard Medical School describes the negative symptoms as being even more pervasive and persistent and having an even more powerful impact on the person's life. Harvard's Health Guide to Schizophrenia states that the symptoms are described as negative because the person experiences a severe lack or deficit in healthy emotions and feelings towards the outside world. Examples of negative symptoms may include inexpressive faces, blank looks, flat dry speech and posture, a lack of interest in friends or family, and the general absence of joy or healthy spontaneity. Someone with negative symptoms of schizophrenia may simply withdraw from a previously healthy active life and show little interest in hobbies, friends or work.
Cognitive Symptoms
The cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia may be more subtle and harder to recognize. Tests performed by professionals may be necessary in order to fully diagnose the cognitive symptoms as being particular to schizophrenia rather than another neurocognitive impairment such as head trauma or depression. Dr. Lewis Opler at Columbia University notes that a proper tool for recognizing the cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia is the MATRICS checksheet.
MATRICS stands for Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia. The checklist looks for the person's speed of processing information, level of attention, active memory, verbal learning, visual learning, rational thought, problem solving and social awareness. In addition, the National Institute of Mental Health states that a person with cognitive symptoms may experience problems with executive functioning. Executive functioning refers to a person's ability take in present information and make rational informed decisions at a speed that does not disrupt the natural flow of human interaction.
