According to DSMIV, the positive symptoms of Schizophrenia includes: A. Hallucinations B. Delusions C. Flat effect D. Bizarre behavior

Schizophrenia is the descriptive term for a group of psychotic disorders in which personal, social, and occupational functioning deteriorate as a result of disturbed thought processes, strange perceptions, unusual emotional states, and motor abnormalities. It is a debilitating disorder. The social and psychological costs of schizophrenia are tremendous, both to patients as well as to their families and society.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

• The symptoms of schizophrenia can be grouped into three categories 
  1. positive symptoms (i.e. excesses of thought, emotion, and behavior),
  2. negative symptoms (i.e. deficits of thought, emotion, and behavior), and
  3. psychomotor symptoms.

1) Positive symptoms:

• These are ‘pathological excesses’ or ‘bizarre additions’ to a person’s behavior.
• Delusions, disorganized thinking, and speech heightened perception and hallucinations, and inappropriate effects are the ones most often found in schizophrenia.
• Delusion:
  • A delusion is a false belief that is firmly held on inadequate grounds.
  • It is not affected by rational argument and has no basis in reality.
  • Delusions of persecution are the most common in schizophrenia.
  • People with this delusion believe that they are being plotted against, spied on, slandered, threatened, attacked, or deliberately victimized. 
• Hallucinations:
  • perceptions that occur in the absence of external stimuli.
  • Auditory hallucinations are most common in schizophrenia. Patients hear sounds or voices that speak words, phrases, and sentences directly to the patient (second-person hallucination) or talk to one another referring to the patient as s/he (third-person hallucination).
  • Hallucinations can also involve the other senses. These include:
    • tactile hallucinations (i.e. forms of tingling, burning),
    • somatic hallucinations (i.e. something happening inside the body such as a snake crawling inside one’s stomach),
    • visual hallucinations (i.e. vague perceptions of color or distinct visions of people or objects),
    • gustatory hallucinations (i.e. food or drink taste strange), and
    • olfactory hallucinations (i.e. smell of poison or smoke)

2) Negative symptoms: 

• These are ‘pathological deficits’ and include poverty of speech, blunted and flat affect, loss of volition, and social withdrawal. 
• People with schizophrenia show alogia or poverty of speech.
• Alogia:
  • alogia or poverty of speech, i.e. a reduction in speech and speech content.
  • Many people with schizophrenia show less anger, sadness, joy, and other feelings than most people do. Thus they have blunted effect.
  • Some show no emotions at all, a condition is known as flat affect.
  • Also patients with schizophrenia experience avolition, apathy, and an inability to start or complete a course of action.
  • People with this disorder may withdraw socially and become totally focused on their own ideas and fantasies.

3) Psychomotor symptoms:

• People with schizophrenia also show psychomotor symptoms.
• They move less spontaneously or make odd grimaces and gestures.
• These symptoms may take extreme forms known as catatonia.
• ​Catatonia: 
  • People in a catatonic stupor remain motionless and silent for long stretches of time.
  • Some show catatonic rigidity, i.e. maintaining a rigid, upright posture for hours.
  • Others exhibit catatonic posturing, i.e. assuming awkward, bizarre positions for long periods of time.