Negative symptoms of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia changes how you think, feel, and act. Its symptoms are grouped as positive, negative , and cognitive. Not everyone will have the same symptoms , and they can come and go. Negative symptoms are a less well known aspect of schizophrenia than the positive symptoms.

Stories about disturbed behaviour appear in the news media quite frequently and there is a generally high level of awareness in the general public about the hallucinations and delusions that schizophrenia causes. All of them are roughly equally good at suppressing psychotic symptoms and equally ineffective against negative symptoms — whether the source of these symptoms is schizophrenia or another disorder.

No drug treatment for negative symptoms is on the near horizon, but the search continues. In addition, the drugs used to treat positive symptoms of schizophrenia can increase secondary negative symptoms and do not work on primary and persistent negative symptoms. This is why effective treatment ideally includes a combination of drugs, therapy, and support.

Because intense effort yielded only modest success, researchers and clinicians have again begun to pay less attention to negative symptoms and shifted their focus to cognition in schizophrenia. The way these symptoms manifest themselves is different in each patient, and it profoundly affects how well they function. Symptoms are described in terms of positive, negative , and cognitive symptoms. The negative symptoms of schizophrenia can often appear several years before somebody experiences their first acute schizophrenic episode.

These initial negative symptoms are often referred to as the prodromal period of schizophrenia.

Symptoms during the prodromal period usually appear gradually and slowly. In schizophrenia , negative symptoms such as social withdrawal, avoidance, lack of spontaneity and flow of conversation, reduced initiative, anhedonia, and blunted affect are among the most challenging to treat. Typically emerging long before the onset of psychosis, these symptoms often persist throughout the course of the illness. Observational study using an anonymised electronic health record.

Negative schizophrenia symptoms are more troublesome for an individual with the disease because it alters their capability to function normally. Cognitive schizophrenia symptoms are severe for some schizophrenic patients and subtle for the others. The symptoms of schizophrenia can be divided into two types, positive and negative. Also, the effects are much more visible than in patients with positive symptoms.

Symptoms of schizophrenia usually start between ages and 30. In rare cases, children have schizophrenia too. People with positive symptoms may. Positive symptoms : “Positive” symptoms are psychotic behaviors not generally seen in healthy people. So why are these types of symptoms called positive?

For example, hallucinations, which are not part of the normal, day-to-day experience for most people, are classified as a positive symptom for people with schizophrenia. A negative symptom takes away a feeling or ability that is normally present in most people, but is now missing—such as a lack of motivation. Most people with schizophrenia experience both positive and negative symptoms.

This article focuses on a brief description of the types of negative symptoms , their progress over the course of the illness, and newer emerging molecular targets for their treatment.

But although the positive symptoms of schizophrenia are very serious, the schizophrenia negative symptoms can be just as. Hallucinations – Seeing, feeling and hearing things that aren’t there. A person with schizophrenia who is not receiving treatment.