Positive and negative symptoms may occur in people with schizophrenia. This isn’t to say that specific symptoms are “excellent” and others are “bad.” Positive symptoms are behaviors that are over-represented in persons with schizophrenia but are uncommon in normally healthy people.
Delusions, hallucinations, confused thoughts, and disorganized speech are all positive signs that may lead you or someone you care about to lose touch with reality. Negative schizophrenia refers to inadequate or absent actions or feelings in persons with schizophrenia.
Negative symptoms are sometimes known as deficit symptoms since they suggest functional deficiencies. Lack of feeling, low pleasure or drive, delayed speaking, and trouble with starting and maintaining tasks are frightening and distressing symptoms. If you or someone you care about is experiencing negative symptoms, you may need assistance to do everyday duties.
How is Schizophrenia Diagnosed?
The first step in developing an effective treatment plan for schizophrenia is to correctly diagnose the mental health disorder. Typically, a schizophrenia patient must meet at least two out of five categories of symptoms. Delusions, which can form as both paranoia and suspicion, represent the first symptom of the mental health disease. Hallucinations can either be visual or audible, such as hearing voices that no one else can hear. The most visible sign of schizophrenia is unusual behavioral patterns that can include sudden, strange movements and a high level of irritation. Because the mind races for many patients of the disease, it becomes difficult to organize coherent thoughts. Finally, a schizophrenia patient might lose the ability to respond emotionally to certain stimuli.
Understanding Types of Hallucinations
Hallucinations are categorized into five types.
- There are auditory hallucinations, which is what command hallucinations are. These are when someone hears things no one else does. We can also describe these as verbal hallucinations.
- Visual hallucinations are the second most common type, behind auditory hallucinations. Visual hallucinations
- Tactile hallucinations are when someone feels sensations, like bugs crawling on their skin.
- Olfactory hallucinations are smelling something that’s not physically coming from anywhere.
- Gustatory hallucinations are the least common, and it’s when there’s a taste in someone’s mouth with no source.
Compliance with Command Hallucinations
A command hallucination appears to come from an external source, or they can feel like they’re coming from someone’s head. The hallucinations can include commands to harm oneself as the “voice hearer” or another person.
- When someone experiences a command hallucination, they may or may not comply.
- Compliance is most often seen in non-violent commands.
- Around 30-65% of people with command hallucinations telling them to harm others or engage in dangerous behavior comply with those.
- The concept of this type of hallucination is sometimes used to defend the committing of a crime.
The command can be something benign. For example, someone might think a voice is telling them to close the door. They can also be severe and dangerous, including telling someone to hurt another person. Whether benign or harmful, they’re still categorized as command hallucinations.
Causes of Negative Symptoms
The exact source of unpleasant symptoms is unknown. While some studies claim that these impairments run in families, negative symptoms and deficit schizophrenia have no documented genetic link.
While winter birth raises the chance of schizophrenia, summer birth seems to increase the probability of negative symptoms in persons with schizophrenia.
Types of Negative Symptoms
Understanding the different types of schizophrenia, which often have one of four defining characteristics, is the first step toward regulating the unpleasant deficits:
- Affective: Lack of eye contact, facial expressions, and voice patterns
- Avolition (also called Conational): Severe lack of motivation
- Communicative: Lacking in speech
- Relational: lack of interest in social activities and relationships
Because negative symptoms might include cognitive, emotional, and social aptitude impairments, there could be a wide range of potential symptoms. In the most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), negative symptoms are defined as “limited emotional expression and avolition” and are classified into five categories.
Affective Blunt
This reduces a person’s capacity to express emotions, resulting in reduced facial and emotional responses.
A blunted effect is less severe than a flat effect. A person’s emotional range is severely restricted. For example, not being able to grin or laugh even while experiencing enormous delight.
Alogia
Alogia (also known as “poverty of speech”), which is defined in DSM-5 as a “reduction in verbal output or verbal expressiveness,” may make it practically hard to explain your ideas and carry on a conversation.
When answering inquiries, people with alogia may react with a monosyllabic “yes” or “no” and have delays in speaking. These speech delays should not be confused with those induced by positive symptoms such as auditory or visual hallucinations or disordered thinking.
Asociality
Asociality is also known as nonsocial, unsociability, social indifference, or a lack of social desire. A lack of interest in social connections or an increased desire to spend time alone are signs of asociality. 3 This is not the same as someone who isolates themselves after hearing voices or suffering paranoia.
Avolition
Avolition is an emotional or behavioral paralysis that affects your motivation to engage in social activities and achieve objectives and your capacity to finish everyday duties. This negative symptom is sometimes misinterpreted as “laziness.”
Avolition, in the case of schizophrenia, produces a widespread lack of excitement, as well as a conspicuous lack of care for both trivial and essential problems (such as what to eat, how to pay the bills, and what will happen when the family is no longer present to support). This may even extend to mundane tasks like personal hygiene and grooming.
Anhedonia
In Greek, an means “without,” and hedone means “pleasure.” Therefore, anhedonia is a condition in which you cannot experience pleasure. This may result in a loss of excitement for previously liked activities, interests, passions, and pleasures in persons with schizophrenia.
Is There a Cure for Schizophrenia?
There is no cure for schizophrenia, although the condition may be effectively treated and controlled with medication and therapy. The most important thing is to have a solid support structure and get the appropriate therapy and self-help for your specific requirements.
Treatment for Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Because of the nature of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, treating them may be difficult. For example, someone who lacks ambition, excitement, or desire to socialize may be unwilling to seek and adhere to therapy.
Furthermore, medications intended to treat positive symptoms of schizophrenia may exacerbate secondary negative symptoms while failing to address primary and persistent negative symptoms.
The most successful treatment consists of medications, counseling, and support.
How Effective is Medication for Schizophrenia?
The type of drug mental health professionals use to treat schizophrenia is a category of medications called antipsychotics. Two classes of medications affect the dopamine system in the brain. The classes of medications include an older, first generation of drugs, as well as second generation of medications that typically produce less severe side effects.
The first generation class of antipsychotics includes the following drugs:
· chlorpromazine
· fluphenazine
· haloperidol
· trifluoperazine
· thiothixene
Mental health professionals that treat schizophrenia symptoms often try second-generation antipsychotic drugs first because the medications produce fewer and less serious side effects. First-generation antipsychotics can develop side effects that can negatively impact a patient’s health.
Here are a few examples of second-generation antipsychotics:
· asenapine
· clozapine
· iloperidone
· lumateperone
· lurasidone
Treating schizophrenia patients with antipsychotics frequently requires a mental health practitioner to try more than one medication or combination of medications. Patients receive a low dose of an antipsychotic until a mental health practitioner discovers the most effective medication.
Psychosocial Interventions
Behavioral therapy, support therapy, and family psychoeducation are examples of psychosocial therapies that shift a person’s behaviors toward a more healthy engagement with society. These interventions may help persons with long-term unfavorable systems and their families recognize and manage cognitive, emotional, and social limitations.
Supportive Therapy
Companionship, nonjudgmental affirmation, common-sense guidance, and comfort from a competent therapist are all available via supportive therapy.
Your therapist will often intervene on your behalf to help you communicate with family members and authorities such as schools and social services.
Behavioral therapy
Behavioral treatment, such as social skills training and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), may help you notice and participate in behaviors and activities that enhance your overall quality of life.
For example, during the social skills training, you will learn how to communicate thoughts and wants, ask questions, and manage your voice, body, and facial expressions. CBT may help you, or someone you care about to recognize and correct weaknesses that negatively affect behavior and emotions.
To learn more about ways you can help lessen the symptoms of Schizophrenia in Southern California call Story Wellness at (866) 476-2823
