The symptoms of schizophrenia are usually classified as positive symptoms, negative symptoms and cognitive symptoms.

Positive Symptoms

What constitutes positive symptoms are symptoms that are psychotic; they are not seen in the regular population. These symptoms render a person suffering from schizophrenia out of touch with reality. The symptoms will come and go, and their severity will depend upon if they are getting treatment or not. Treatment will prevent or at least control the symptoms so that they are milder. The positive symptoms of schizophrenia include:

Hallucinations

Hallucinations are things that a person with schizophrenia, sees, hears, smells, or feels when nobody else experiences these things. These symptoms are called psychotic symptoms because they are not part of reality or what is really happening. The most common of these symptoms is hearing voices. These voices might tell the patient to do different things, they might reprimand the patient, or they may warn the patient that there is imminent danger when in reality there is not. These voices might tell the person to kill somebody or they might tell the person that certain people are out to murder him or her. Sometimes there many voices all talking at once.

Hallucinations can also include seeing things that do not exist, and smelling odors that do not exist either. Patients can also feel things crawling on them or feel fingers touching them and yet nobody else can see it. Sometimes when these patients are having these hallucinatory symptoms others can tell and sometimes they cannot.

Delusions

Delusions are false beliefs that are not shared by anyone else, they are not part of the person.s culture, or upbringing, or education. These beliefs can be very bizarre such as seeing cigarettes sailing through the air, or people walking around the park with three heads. These beliefs are so strong that no one can convince them otherwise. They may believe that people such as their neighbors are controlling their thoughts. Sometimes people with schizophrenia hear the voices in their heads and sometimes they hear the TV talking to them telling them different things. They even think that the radio stations are broadcasting their thoughts all over the country.

Delusions of grandeur are when they feel that they can do something which is totally impossible such as not having any formal education and telling everyone that they applied for a job and the interviewer was so impressed they were given the position of CEO. They might also believe that they are some famous person, such as Napoleon or Queen Victoria.

Delusions of persecution are when they feel they are being harmed in some way, someone is out to kill them or poison them, cheating on them, plot against them or hate them and want to do them some harm even though they have not figured out how or what that might be.

Thought Disorder

These symptoms have to do with organizing and communicating thoughts. The patient may have trouble organizing thoughts in a cohesive fashion and they and when spoken they do not make sense. For example they might say, .I walked across the moon, shoelace fell off the dog barked up the man.s nose.. Besides disorganized that they may have garbled words you cannot understand. They might have blocked thoughts where they start to say something and then stop. It occurs when the patient feels that his or her thought has completely been lifted from his or her mind. Finally the person can utter completely nonsense words.

Movement disorders

These movements can be agitated body movements like making the same movement over and over again such as pacing back and forth. They may be completely motionless such as not moving, and with eyes focused on the same spot. This is condition is called catatonia and rarely happens when medication is available.

Negative symptoms

Negative symptoms are not specific to schizophrenia and can be mistaken for symptoms of depression and other mental illness: These symptoms include loss of pleasure in life, flat affect meaning the individual does not show any emotion at all, lack of ability to participate and sustain in activities, and speaking very little. The patients may neglect the most basic things such as hygiene. They do need help to cope with daily activities.

Cognitive dysfunctions

Cognitive dysfunctions are sometimes hard to distinguish as well. They could be very subtle such as not being able to make decisions or comprehend certain things. They may have trouble maintaining focus and paying attention, and they may have problems with short term memory.

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