People with schizophrenia usually experience two types of symptoms, positive symptoms or negative symptoms. Positive Symptoms are psychological features that are added as a result of the disorder, and are not normally seen in healthy people. Positive symptoms would be hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking, and agitation (Barbour, 2001). People who display predominantly positive symptoms are considered to have Type I schizophrenia (Barbour 2001). Negative symptoms are psychological capabilities, which most people posses, but which people with schizophrenia have lost. Lack of drive or initiative, social withdrawal, apathy, and emotional unresponsiveness are all considered negative symptoms (Barbour 2002). People who display predominantly negative symptoms are considered to have Type II schizophrenia (Barbour 2002). .
Schizophrenia A Tragic 4.
(Gesalman, Springer, & Underwood, 2001) In one subtype, catatonic schizophrenia, the patient often seems to be in a stupor, resisting all entreaties and instructions, or engages in purposeless movements, bizarre postures, exaggerated mannerisms or grimacing. In paranoid schizophrenia, the patient becomes convinced of beliefs at odds with reality, hears voices that aren't there or sees images that exist nowhere but in their mind (2001).
Neither doctors nor scientists can accurately predict who will become schizophrenic. The cause is largely unknown. (Matson, 1996) The first signs of schizophrenia typically emerge in adolescence or young adulthood. Schizophrenia is found all over the world, and rates of illness are very similar from country to country. Men and women are at equal risk of developing the illness. Most males become ill between 16 and 25 years of age, most females develop symptoms between ages 25 and 30 (1996). .
While schizophrenia can affect anyone at any point in life, it is somewhat more common in those persons who are genetically predisposed to the disease.