Schizophrenia symptoms:What are delusions and thought disorders?

schizophrenia symptoms,delusions Many people are unaware that schizophrenia symptoms can actually be categorized into three different groups: positive symptoms (excesses of thought, emotion, and behavior), negative schizophrenia symptoms (deficits of, emotion, and behavior), and psychomotor symptoms. Men are more likely to display negative symptoms than women, while both sexes seem to manifest positive symptoms to approximately the same degree. Positive schizophrenia symptoms are "pathological excesses," or what may be described as bizarre additions to a person's behavior. Delusions, disorganized thinking and speech, heightened perceptions and hallucinations, and inappropriate affect are the positive symptoms most often found in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia Symptoms - Delusions:

Delusions are some the most common of the schizophrenia symptoms. Delusions are ideas that you may believe in fervently but actually have no basis in fact. Some people with schizophrenia symptoms hold a single delusion, that seems to dominate their life, while others have many delusions. Delusions of persecution are the most common. People with these types of delusions usually feel that they're being plotted or discriminated against, spied on, threatened, attacked or deliberately victimized.

Delusions of reference are also relatively common. These types of schizophrenia symptoms are when an individual attaches special personal meaning to actions of others or to various objects and events when there is no information to confirm this experience. Frequently, individuals may feel that televisions are talking to them or people are sending thoughts to them. Some of the other more common delusions include delusions of grandeur in which individuals believe they have enormously empowered characteristics (great inventor, movie star etc.) and delusions of control, in which they believe their feelings, thoughts, and actions are being controlled by other people.

Schizophrenia Symptoms - Disorganized thinking and speech:

People with schizophrenia symptoms may not be able to think in logical ways and may demonstrate various peculiarities. These formal thought disorders may cause the sufferer to feel enormous confusion and make communication very difficult. Often these symptoms take the form of loose associations, neologisms, perseveration, and clang.

People who have loose associations and derailment, the two most common formal thought disorders, rapidly shift from topic to topic, making it very difficult to follow their conversation. Unfortunately, they believe their incoherent statements make perfectly good sense. What may appear to be a single, unimportant word, then becomes the focus or topic of the next sentence.

Some people with schizophrenia symptoms also use neologisms, which are made-up words that typically have only meaning to the individual who uses them. Other individuals have the formal thought disorder, perseveration, in which they repeat their words and statements over and over. Some also use clang or rhyming to express themselves.

Formal thought disorders are not unique to individuals displaying schizophrenia symptoms. Loose associations and perseveration may also be manifested in individuals during episodes of mania. Also, even when people function normally, they may organize statements loosely or on occasion use words that others fail to understand, especially when they're tired or ill. Incidences of formal thought disorders however, are much more common and severe. Research has found that some disorganized speech or thinking may appear long before an entire pattern of schizophrenia unfolds and/or is diagnosed.

Information provided by Ronald J. Comer's Abnormal Psychology

By Paul Susic MA Licensed Psychologist Ph.D Candidate (Health Psychology)