Schizophrenia-differential Diagnosis

schrieber · Newbie Joined: 26 Jun 2005 Posts: 21

Recently my brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He is 25 and he was always different while we were growing up. I guess now I know why, and it is so sad. There is no history of schizophrenia in my family so I am wondering is this diagnosis 100% sure. Can I get more information? Thanx

volkmer · Newbie Joined: 23 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

The chance that the doctors have made a wrong diagnosis of your brother's condition is very low. However, if you and your family have your doubts you can always ask another opinion. Schizophrenia is characterized by profound disruption in cognition and emotion and it is affecting the most fundamental human attributes like language, thought, perception, affect and sense of self. The symptoms of schizophrenia are usually hallucinations-psychotic manifestations such as hearing internal voices or experiencing sensations that are not connected to an obvious source and delusions-assigning unusual significance or meaning to normal events. Depending on their impact on diagnosis and treatment, symptoms of schizophrenia are divided into positive and negative ones. Positive symptoms are those that appear to reflect an excess or distortion of normal functions. Negative symptoms are those that appear to reflect a diminution or loss of normal functions. When it comes to diagnosis of schizophrenia, it requires at least one month duration of two or more positive symptoms. It is difficult to evaluate negative symptoms because they are not abnormal as positives ones and can be caused by a variety of other factors. They often persist in the lives of people with schizophrenia during periods of low positive symptoms.

Schizophrenia-differential Diagnosis

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