Schizophrenia Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Schizophrenia - Article Example Positive Symptoms include delusions and hallucinations because the patient has lost touch with reality in certain important ways. Delusions cause the patient to believe that people are reading their thoughts or plotting against them, that others are secretly monitoring and threatening them, or that they can control other peoples minds. Hallucinations cause people to hear or see things that are not there. Disorganized Symptoms include confused thinking and speech, and behavior that do not make sense. For instance, people with schizophrenia sometimes have trouble communicating in coherent sentences or carrying on conversations with others; move more slowly, repeat rhythmic gestures or make movements such as walking in circles or pacing; and have difficulty making sense of everyday sights, sounds and feelings. Negative Symptoms include emotional flatness or lack of expression, an inability to start and follow through with activities, speech that is brief and lacks content, and a lack of pleasure or interest in life (NAMI, 2006). The older standard (‘Typical’) anti-psychotic drugs, though effective, are associated with a range of distressing side-effects which can result in constant twitching/fidgeting, writhing and disjointed movements. However, newer (‘Atypical’) anti-psychotic drugs are designed to offer control of symptoms and less of these disabling side-effects. National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), , Schizophrenia (2006) 4 December 2006.