Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that affects the way a person behaves, thinks, and sees the world around him. People with schizophrenia have a much altered perception of the reality. They see or hear things that don’t exist and are convinced that others are trying to harm them, or are constantly watching them. In some people, schizophrenia emerges suddenly and without any warning. But in most of the cases, it comes on slowly, with slight warning signs and a steady decline in functioning.

In general there are several types of symptoms of schizophrenia. Here are four most common ones:

Hallucinations:
Hallucinations are false or hazy sensory experiences that appear to be real perceptions although they are not. These false sensory impressions are generated by the mind rather than by any external stimuli, and may be seen, heard, felt, and even smelled. The hallucinations experienced by the Schizophrenics are usually perceived by them as objectively real events. Auditory hallucinations are the most common among Schizophrenics followed by visual hallucinations.

Disorder of mood:
While Schizophrenia is considered to be a disturbance of thought, it often involves the disturbance of mood as well. Two types of abnormalities seen in Schizophrenics are— blunted affect and flat affect. Patients with blunted effect show little emotion and those with flat affect show no emotion at all.

Delusions:
Delusions are firmly held beliefs that have no bases in reality. The content of Schizophrenic delusions is very rich and diverse. Here are some recognized patterns on which they fall:

1) Delusion of persecution.
2) Delusion of control.
3) Delusion of reference.
4) Delusion of sin and guilt
5) Delusion of grandeur.

Poverty of content:
A Schizophrenics language may convey very little. Though the person may use grammatically correct words, he/she nevertheless may communicate poorly. There words most of the times convey nothing, for they lack any unifying principle.