Psychosis is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality." People suffering from it are said to be psychotic. People experiencing psychosis may report hallucinations or delusional beliefs, and may exhibit personality changes and disorganized thinking. This may be accompanied by unusual or bizarre behaviour, as well as difficulty with social interaction and impairment in carrying out the activities of daily living.
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality, most commonly manifesting as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions or disorganized speech and thinking in the context of significant social or occupational dysfunction. Studies suggest that genetics, early environment, neurobiology and psychological and social processes are important contributory factors.
Signs and symptoms
A person experiencing schizophrenia may demonstrate symptoms such as disorganized thinking, auditory hallucinations, and delusions. In severe cases, the person may be largely mute, remain motionless in bizarre postures, or exhibit purposeless agitation; these are signs of catatonia. The current classification of psychoses holds that symptoms need to have been present for at least one month in a period of at least six months of disturbed functioning.
Positive and negative symptoms
Schizophrenia is often described in terms of positive (or productive) and negative (or deficit) symptoms. Positive symptoms include delusions, auditory hallucinations, and thought disorder, and are typically regarded as manifestations of psychosis. Negative symptoms are so-named because they are considered to be the loss or absence of normal traits or abilities, and include features such as flat or blunted affect and emotion, poverty of speech (alogia), anhedonia, and lack of motivation (avolition).
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