What are some Signs or symptoms of Schizophrenia

Question

im curious

Answer 1

A person diagnosed with schizophrenia may demonstrate disorganized and unusual thinking and speech, auditory hallucinations, and delusions. Social isolation commonly occurs for a variety of reasons. Impairment in social cognition is associated with schizophrenia, as are symptoms of paranoia from delusions and hallucinations, and the negative symptoms of apathy and avolition. In one uncommon subtype, the person may be largely mute, remain motionless in bizarre postures, or exhibit purposeless agitation; these are signs of catatonia. No one sign is diagnostic of schizophrenia, and all can occur in other medical and psychiatric conditions. The current classification of psychoses holds that symptoms need to have been present for at least one month in a period of at least six months of disturbed functioning. A schizophrenia-like psychosis of shorter duration is termed a schizophreniform disorder.

Late adolescence and early adulthood are peak years for the onset of schizophrenia. These are critical periods in a young adult's social and vocational development, and they can be severely disrupted. To minimize the effect of schizophrenia, much work has recently been done to identify and treat the prodromal (pre-onset) phase of the illness, which has been detected up to 30 months before the onset of symptoms, but may be present longer. Those who go on to develop schizophrenia may experience the non-specific symptoms of social withdrawal, irritability and dysphoria in the prodromal period, and transient or self-limiting psychotic symptoms in the prodromal phase before psychosis becomes apparent.

Answer 2

You might check out these websites:



http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publicati...

http://www.nami.org

http://www.schizophrenia.ca/files/Rays_o...

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/schizop...



They have a lot of very good information on schizophrenia.  The first three websites have booklets in pdf format that you can download and save for future reference.



There is also an excellent book, "Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Patients, and Providers" by E. Fuller Torrey, Fifth Edition.  I know Barnes & Noble has it.  Amazon.com only has the 4th edition.  That is very good reading and tells a lot about schizophrenia.