Schizophrenia Symptoms
Schizophrenia is a rare but serious mental health condition that alters the way you think, feel, act, and perceive your surroundings. Schizophrenia involves several different types of symptoms.
- Positive symptoms (also known as psychotic symptoms): These involve symptoms of psychosis like hallucinations and delusions
- Negative symptoms: These are the absence of expected ways that an individual typically interacts with their environment. They can include speaking in a flat or monotonous tone of voice, decreased emotional expression, speaking very little even when forced to interact, a loss of interest in social interactions and daily activities, and significant fatigue.
- Disorganized symptoms: These may involve disorganized thinking, speech, and movements. Someone with schizophrenia may have trouble organizing their thoughts when speaking or may speak in ways that don’t make sense to others. They may also move in unusual ways, such as spinning around for no clear reason.
- Cognitive symptoms: These symptoms may include memory issues, difficulty focusing, problems with decision-making, and difficulty processing information shortly after learning it.
Schizoaffective Disorder Symptoms
“Schizoaffective disorder is [characterized] by a combination of core schizophrenia symptoms, such as hallucinations, delusions, or disorganized thoughts, and prominent mood disorder symptoms, either depressive or manic episodes,” says Sogand Ghassemi, MD, a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist for Newport Healthcare’s PrairieCare psychiatric program in Minnesota.
A manic episode is a period when a person is extremely high-spirited, irritable, or has more energy than usual. A depressive episode is a period when a person feels intense sadness, hopelessness, or loss of interest in things they once enjoyed.
Symptoms of schizoaffective disorder may include:
- Hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren’t really there)
- Delusions (strongly held false beliefs, despite clear evidence that they’re false)
- Disorganized speech (talking in a way that doesn’t make sense to others)
- Behaviors that are odd or confusing
- Loss of interest in keeping up self-care or hygiene
- Difficulty relating to others
- Manic symptoms, such as elevated energy levels, markedly upbeat mood, racing thoughts, feeling like you can achieve anything, rapid and excessive speech, decreased need for sleep, distractibility, and increased risky behavior.
- Depressive symptoms, such as extreme sadness, loss of interest in people, places, and things that are usually important to the person, changes in sleeping or eating habits, decreased energy levels, or suicidal thoughts
“Cognitive and functional impairments may accompany these episodes, which can impact occupational and interpersonal functioning,” says Dr. Ghassemi. The severity, duration, and pattern of these symptoms often vary from person to person, she says.
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