1. Descriptions of symptoms and features, including thought insertion, hallucinations, delusions, disordered thinking, etc.

Symptoms

Behaviours + thoughts → by which mental disorder is diagnosed

Positive symptoms

Symptoms “added” → to experience of individual

• Overt symptoms → that should not be present

Types of positive symptoms

1. Hallucinations

2. Delusions

3. Disorganized thinking/thoughts

Hallucinations

• Seeing/hearing things → that are not real

• Common auditory hallucination: hearing voices

Delusions

• False ideas → you feel convinced are true

• Common delusions:

  • Paranoia → belief that people = watching + want to hurt you

  • Delusions of grandeur → belief you are important + heroic + have superpowers

  • Delusions of identity → thinking you are someone else

  • Thought insertion → belief that thoughts = not your own + have been put into your mind → by someone else

Disorganized thinking/thoughts

• Known as thought disorder/loosening of associations

• Speech may become tangential → jumping from one topic to another → apparently at random/on loosest of associations → or giving answers to unrelated questions

• Speech may become circumstantial → speaking continuously + providing irrelevant questions + never getting to the point

• Speech can become so disorganized → it becomes a completely jumped “word salad”

Negative symptoms

Symptoms that disorder → “takes away” → from experience of the world

• Does not refer → to person’s attitude → but instead to lack of characteristics → that should be present

Types of negative symptoms

1. Speech problems

2. Loss of emotions

3. Lack of motivation

4. Social withdrawal

Speech problems

• Includes inability to speak at all

• Alogia → symptom → causes indiv. to speak less + say fewer words/only speak in response to others

Loss of emotions

• Feeling of numbness → may include loss of facial expressions

• Affective flattening → reduced/absent expression

Lack of motivation

• Avolition → total lack of motivation → makes it hard → to get anything done

• Anhedonia → lack of interest/enjoyment/pleasure → from life’s experiences

Social withdrawal

• Breaking friendships + quitting jobs + not making eye-contact + not responding to others

• Asociality → lack of motivation → to engage in social interaction

  • Preference for solitary activities

Cognitive deficits

Type of negative symptom → involving loss of mental abilities

Types of cognitive deficits

• Memory loss → amnesia

• Attention deficit → includes being distracted

• Planning difficulties → include problems thinking about the future

• Poor decision making → linked to avolition