The Psychological Disorder 'Schizophrenia'

Schizophrenia  is a mental disorder characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by impairedemotional responses. Common symptoms include delusions, such as paranoid beliefs; hallucinations; disorganized thinking; and negative symptoms, such as blunted affect and avolition. 

Schizophrenia causes significant social and vocational dysfunction. Symptom onset typically occurs in young adulthood, with a global lifetime prevalence of about 0.3–0.7%. Diagnosis is based on observed behavior and the person's reported experiences.

Two types of Schizophrenia:

Negative symptoms are deficits of normal emotional responses or of other thought processes, and respond less well to medication. They commonly include flat or blunted affect and emotion, poverty of speech (alogia), inability to experience pleasure (anhedonia), lack of desire to form relationships (asociality), and lack of motivation (avolition). Research suggests that negative symptoms contribute more to poor quality of life, functional disability, and the burden on others than do positive symptoms. People with prominent negative symptoms often have a history of poor adjustment before the onset of illness, and response to medication is often limited

Schizophrenia is often described in terms of positive and negative (or deficit) symptoms. Positive symptoms are those that most individuals do not normally experience but are present in people with schizophrenia. They can include delusions, disordered thoughts and speech, and tactile, auditory,visual, olfactory and gustatory hallucinations, typically regarded as manifestations of psychosis. Hallucinations are also typically related to the content of the delusional theme. Positive symptoms generally respond well to medication.

Diagnosis Of Schizophrenia:

Schizophrenia is diagnosed based on criteria in either the American Psychiatric Association's fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5), or the World Health Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10). These criteria use the self-reported experiences of the person and reported abnormalities in behavior, followed by a clinical assessment by a mental health professional. Symptoms associated with schizophrenia occur along a continuum in the population and must reach a certain severity before a diagnosis is made. As of 2013 there is no objective test