Recognizing Adolescent Schizophrenia Disorders
Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe and disabling brain disorder that develops in males in their late teens or early twenties and females in the twenties and thirties, but symptoms can also appear in childhood.
The symptoms of schizophrenia fall into three broad categories:
- Positive symptoms are unusual thoughts or perceptions including hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder, and disorder of movement.
- Negative symptoms represent a loss or a decrease in the ability to initiate plans, speak, express emotion or find pleasure in everyday life. These symptoms are harder to recognize as part of the disorder and can be mistaken for laziness or depression.
- Cognitive symptoms (or cognitive deficits) are problems with attention, certain types of memory and the executive functions that allow us to plan and organize. Cognitive deficits can also be difficult to recognize as part of the disorder but are the most disabling in terms of leading a normal life.
Types Of Schizophrenia Disorders
- Hallucinations: A hallucination is something a person sees, hears, smells or feels that no one else can see, hear, smell or feel. Voices are the most common type of hallucination in schizophrenia. Many people with the disorder hear voices that may comment on their behavior, order them to do things, warn them of impending danger, or talk to each other (usually about the patient). Other types include seeing people or objects that are not there, smelling odors that no one else detects and feeling things like invisible fingers touching their bodies when no one is near.
- Delusions: : Delusions are false personal beliefs that are not part of the person's culture and do not change, even when other people present proof that the beliefs are not true or logical. Delusions can be bizarre, such as believing that neighbors can control their behavior with magnetic waves, people on television are directing special messages to them or radio stations are broadcasting their thoughts aloud to others. Delusions of grandeur: think that they are famous historical figures. Delusions of persecution: believe that others are deliberately cheating, harassing, poisoning, spying upon or plotting against them or the people they care about.
- Thought Disorder: includes disorganized thinking; the person has difficulty organizing thoughts or connecting them logically. Speech may be garbled or hard to understand. Thought blocking; the person stops abruptly in the middle of a thought believing that the thought has been taken away. Neologisms; the individual might make up words.
- Disorders of Movement: includes clumsiness and uncoordinated movements, involuntary movements such as grimacing or exhibiting unusual mannerisms, performing certain motions repeatedly, or becoming catatonic, a state of immobility and unresponsiveness.
Links to Additional Online Information
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