If You Have Schizophrenia How Are You Suposed to Know?

leola · Newbie Joined: 10 May 2005 Posts: 18

I was wondering about something. How can someone be sure if another person has schizophrenia? There is one man that is living in my street, and everyone is telling that he has schizophrenia. How can they know? Are there some signs?

camps · Silver Member Joined: 09 Sep 2001 Posts: 285

Schizophrenia is characterized by profound disruption in cognition and emotion. It is affecting the most fundamental human attributes like language, thought, perception, affect and sense of self. The symptoms usually include psychotic manifestations, such as hearing internal voices or experiencing sensations that are not connected to an obvious source (hallucinations) and assigning unusual significance or meaning to normal events (delusions). Symptoms of schizophrenia are divided into positive and negative, depending on their impact on diagnosis and treatment. Positive symptoms are those that appear to reflect an excess or distortion of normal functions and negative are those that appear to reflect a diminution or loss of normal functions. The diagnosis of schizophrenia requires at least one month duration of two or more positive symptoms. Negative symptoms often persist in the lives of people with schizophrenia during periods of low positive symptoms. It is difficult to evaluate negative symptoms because they are not as grossly abnormal as positives ones and can be caused by a variety of other factors.

Usha · Newbie Joined: 10 Feb 2006 Posts: 2

Hi Leola,

I see that you got a fairly comprehensive answer to your question. I was pleasantly surprised to note that you expressed interest about schizophrenia upon coming across someone who may suffer from this illness.

We have a few family members who suffer from schizophrenia. The first memory of it was from an uncle who became a victim to this illness and succumbed to it rather prematurely. I had asked my mother several times how and when my uncle's (her brother's) schizophrenia was first detected and she recounted certain clear symptoms such as the ones described below. But, what was important and what benefitted us greatly was people's awareness about this disorder and sensitivity towards those affected by it.

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Thanks for asking the question that you did.

Cheers,
Usha

If You Have Schizophrenia How Are You Suposed to Know?

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