Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe and debilitating mental disease that manifests itself in positive, negative and cognitive symptoms.

Positive symptoms in schizophrenic patients are psychotic behaviors not typically seen in healthy people. These include hallucinations, delusions, agitation and thought and movement disorders.

Negative symptoms are disruptions to normal emotions and behaviors that may signal social withdrawal such as mood flatness, lack of pleasure in daily life and the inability to initiate and maintain social interaction. Patients may lack the ability to begin and sustain planned activities, or speak little, even when forced to interact. Negative symptoms constitute the main burden of illness, represent an important treatment target and are responsible for the poor vocational and social capabilities of patients with schizophrenia.

Cognitive symptoms interfere with the patient’s ability to engage in daily routines and include: difficulty focusing and paying attention, decreased ability to understand information and make decisions, disrupted working memory and speech difficulty. This lack of cognitive focus has been shown to interrupt executive function, making it harder for patients to sustain relationships or employment.

In addition, about half of patients with schizophrenia experience sleep disorders, further exacerbating their other symptoms. Sleep disorders include difficulty in falling asleep, staying awake or poor sleep quality.

Positive symptoms are often experienced periodically in an individual with schizophrenia, while negative symptoms persist chronically throughout an individual’s lifetime and increase with severity over time. Patients with negative symptoms often have a projected outcome worse than those suffering from positive symptoms, particularly those with persistent chronic negative symptoms. These patients often do not recognize they need help and therefore do not seek treatment.