Schizophrenia is considered to be one of the most serious of all mental disorders. The term has been derived from the Greek words schizein meaning ‘to split’ and phren meaning ‘mind’. It can be defined as a cluster of disorders characterized by the disintegration of basic psychological tasks such as attention, perception, thought, emotions and behavior. Individuals with this disorder depict serious problems in adjusting to reality and misconceive all that is going on around them. They may have hallucinations and delusions of visual as well as auditory nature resulting in a great deal of mental confusion and disorganization of the thought pattern. Many a times their emotions are inappropriate in a given situation and often schizophrenic individuals need to be kept in a mental hospital for treatment purposes and for their own security and that of others.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia:

According to the DSM IV criteria, the symptoms of this disorder are divided into two categories— positive symptoms and negative symptoms.

Positive Symptoms: These include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thought processes and behaviors.

Delusions: These are usually manifested as misconceptions or false beliefs of normal life events and experiences that lead schizophrenics to develop beliefs that are far from reality. There are various types of delusions such as those of persecution, grandeur, jealous, erotomatic or mixed type. A schizophrenic individual with persecutory delusions may feel that he/she is being spied on, plotted against, threatened or is in grave danger. Individuals with delusions of grandeur may feel that they are famous, important and extremely powerful and may even claim to be a famous celebrity, the President of a great nation or even God. Those with jealous type delusions feel that their partner or spouse is cheating on to them even if it is not true.

Hallucinations: Almost 7 per cent of all schizophrenic individuals experience hallucinations. They tend to see or hear certain thongs and people who do not exist in reality. These hallucinations take the form of voices that guide them in various manners. Many a times these individuals appear to be speaking with themselves or with empty walls. They rarely talk or behave like other individuals and their speech is often slurred and disorganized.

Negative Symptoms: These are void of any functions or reactions from the schizophrenic individual. For instance, one of the most common symptoms is flat effect in which the patient lacks all forms of emotion. His/her face completely lacks any emotion and appears to be expressionless. These individuals seem to be staring off into empty space with a distant look.

Avoilation: A patient with this symptom seems to lack all forms of motivation or will. Such individuals may sit for hours at a stretch doing noting or if they start doing something they might stop abruptly in the middle and wander off.