Curriculum · Mental Health / Psychiatry
Positive and negative symptoms in psychosis
What it is
Schizophrenia is a disorder characterized by hallucinations, delusions, disordered thoughts, behavioral disturbances, and negative symptoms. Its symptoms fall into two sets.
The positive symptoms are three: 1) hallucinations; 2) delusions; 3) disorganized speech and behaviors. The negative symptoms are four: 1) flat affect; 2) decreased emotional reactivity; 3) poverty of speech; 4) lack of purposeful actions.
How it presents
The two sets look like this. Persecutory delusions are positive symptoms: believing that neighbors are spying on him, and that they have put a chip in his head. Hallucinatory attitude is positive as well: being seen mumbling to himself although no one is around. Social isolation and withdrawal are the negative symptoms.
The way the condition is classified rests on the same features, and it names three: 1) catatonic, a psychomotor disturbance with more than two of excessive motor activity, immobility, extreme negativism or mutism, posturing, peculiar mannerisms, echolalia, or echopraxia; 2) disorganized, where speech and behavioral patterns are highly disorganized and flat affect is a prominent feature; 3) paranoid, where delusions, often persecuting, and/or hallucinations are present while cognitive function is preserved.