Schizophrenia Symptoms: The Positive, Negative and Cognitive Symptoms

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder that affects around 2.5 million of Americans. The word "schizophrenia" literally translates to "split mind", but it does not actually refer to split personality or multiple personalities. It refers to the disruption in emotion and cognition. Commonly, the symptoms start to develop at from age of 13 to 25. Men usually show the warning signs in their teens or 20s, while women show symptoms when they are in their 20s or early 30s. What are schizophrenia symptoms? The warning signs are classified into three categories: positive, negative and cognitive symptoms.

Positive Symptoms

Patients show positive symptoms when their perception of reality does not exist in the real world. Delusions are one of them; the term refers to the distorted belief that the sufferer strongly holds. One can experience something that is called "delusion of grandeur". This happens when one believes that he or she is well known or has extraordinary powers. Delusions can also be a belief about being followed or being controlled by someone or something. Besides delusions, hallucinations are also categorized as a positive symptom. Hallucinations are disturbances of the perception; usually people experiencing this symptom will see or hear something that is not there. Difficulty in speaking and disorganized behavior are also categorized into this group of symptoms. People suffering from schizophrenia often speak only a little even when they are urged to interact.

Negative Symptoms

Negative symptoms are the absence of the characteristics of normal function. Compared to the positive ones, they are less apparent, and therefore are more difficult to identify. Patients will experience loss of motivation, sense of apathy, social withdrawal, and more. Patients may also show changes in expressing the emotions.

Cognitive Symptoms

Just like the negative symptoms, cognitive symptoms are also hard to identify as they are subtle. They include difficulty in focusing attention, as well as difficulty in understanding information and not knowing how to use them to make decisions. These symptoms can cause emotional distress and sufferers who experience cognitive symptoms will find it difficult to live a normal life.

Those are some common schizophrenia symptoms that you should know. People who are suffering from this debilitating condition need immediate medical attention, but they may not even know that they have it. Thus, it would be your responsibility to find professional help when you find out that your family members or friends are suffering from this mental disorder.

Get more information on schizophrenia symptoms and how you can help schizophrenics deal with the symptoms by visiting our website.

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Can feeling too good be bad? Positive emotion in bipolar disorder

ScienceDaily (July 22, 2011) — Positive emotions like joy and compassion are good for your mental and physical health, and help foster creativity and friendship. But people with bipolar disorder seem to have too much of a good thing. In a new article to be published in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist June Gruber of Yale University considers how positive emotion may become negative in bipolar disorder.

One of the characteristics of bipolar disorder is the extreme periods of positive mood, or mania. People in the grip of mania also have increased energy, sleep less, and experience extreme self-confidence. At first glance, this may sound good and even desirable. However, during these times of mania, people with bipolar disorder often take dangerous risks, run up their credit card debt, and wreak havoc in marriages. "The fact that positive emotion has gone awry is something unique about bipolar disorder, as almost all other emotional disorders are characterized by difficulties in negative emotions" Gruber says.

Gruber points out that positive emotions are problematic for people with bipolar disorder even when they're not experiencing mania. Gruber has studied people whose bipolar disorder is in remission and found that they still experience more positive emotions than people who have never had bipolar disorder. More positive emotions may not sound like a bad thing, but there are times when these positive emotions aren't appropriate. "In our work, those with bipolar disorder continue to report greater positive emotions whether it's a positive film, very sad film clip of a child crying over his father's death, and even disgusting films involving someone digging through feces" she says. In more recent work Gruber and her colleagues have found they still feel good even if a close romantic partner tells them something sad face to face, they still feel good. "It's rose-colored glasses gone too far."

Clinical psychologists may also be able to use this research to figure out who with bipolar disorder is likely to relapse; people who have a lot of positive emotions, even at inappropriate times, may provide a window into possible early warning signs, Gruber says. In a study of healthy college students who had never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Gruber found that those who showed these same high levels of positive emotions that persisted across positive, negative and neutral situations were at higher risk for bipolar disorder.

But not all emotions are alike in bipolar disorder; in fact, they seem to have particular kinds of positive emotions. They report feeling more achievement and self-focused emotions like pride and rewarding feelings like joy. They don't differ social emotions that connect us with others, like love and compassion. "This mirrors early clinical observations and more recent scientific work," Gruber says -- that people with bipolar disorder set very high, ambitious goals, are sensitive to rewards, and in periods of mania, some believe they have special powers.

Psychologists should also consider that there are downsides of positive emotions even for people who don't have bipolar disorder, Gruber says. "Although positive emotions are generally good for us, when they take extreme forms or when they're experienced in the wrong context, the benefits of positive emotion begin to unravel," she says. The goal: "experience it in moderation, in the right place and time."

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Positive effects of depression

ScienceDaily (May 4, 2011) — Sadness, apathy, preoccupation. These traits come to mind when people think about depression, the world's most frequently diagnosed mental disorder. Yet, forthcoming research in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology provides evidence that depression has a positive side-effect.

According to a new study by Bettina von Helversen (University of Basel, Switzerland), Andreas Wilke (Clarkson University), Tim Johnson (Stanford University), Gabriele Schmid (Technische Universität München, Germany), and Burghard Klapp (Charité Hospital Berlin, Germany), depressed individuals perform better than their non-depressed peers in sequential decision tasks.

In their study, participants -- who were healthy, clinically depressed, or recovering from depression -- played a computer game in which they could earn money by hiring an applicant in a simulated job search.

The game assigned each applicant a monetary value and presented applicants one-at-a-time in random order. Experiment participants faced the challenge of determining when to halt search and select the current applicant.

In addition to resembling everyday decision problems, such as house shopping and dating, the task has a known optimal strategy. As reported, depressed patients approximated this optimal strategy more closely than non-depressed participants did.

While healthy participants searched through relatively few candidates before selecting an applicant, depressed participants searched more thoroughly and made choices that resulted in higher payoffs.

This discovery provides the first evidence that clinical depression may carry some benefits. For decades, psychologists have debated whether depression has positive side-effects.

While researchers have recognized that most symptoms of depression impede cognitive functioning, scholars such as Paul Andrews of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics and Andy Thomson of the University of Virginia have proposed that depression may promote analytical reasoning and persistence -- that is, qualities useful in complex tasks.

Past research provides some evidence in support of this possibility, but it focuses on individuals with low levels of non-clinical depression.

The forthcoming article shows that even severe depression might yield some beneficial side effects. Fully understanding the consequences of depression may help uncover its evolutionary roots and thus opening avenues for treatment.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Clarkson University.

Journal Reference:

Bettina von Helversen, Andreas Wilke, Tim Johnson, Gabriele Schmid, Burghard Klapp. Performance benefits of depression: Sequential decision making in a healthy sample and a clinically depressed sample.. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2011; DOI: 10.1037/a0023238

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Positive Sporting Experiences Key For Children's Development

Main Category: Sports Medicine / Fitness
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Psychology / Psychiatry
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A cohesive team environment, assessing one's own performance rather than comparing with others, and involvement in enjoyably challenging practices are the main conditions needed for children to have a positive developmental experience playing team sports.

"There's a lot more to sport than the idea of winning and losing and developing physical skills," explains Jean Côté, head of the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies and a youth sport and coaching expert. "Under the right conditions, youth sport can help children develop transferrable personal and social skills - citizenship qualities that they'll retain throughout their lives."

Dr. Côté found that for children between the ages of nine and 19, positive experiences were associated with coaches who created an inclusive, cohesive team environment where the team engaged in social activities outside of sport and all participants were equally valued on the field.

Coaches who were able to help children improve against their own benchmarks rather than focusing on comparison with others, and who provided challenging, innovative practices also helped foster an environment in which young players displayed initiative and motivation.

Athletes who compete in sports where they peak at a young age, such as diving and gymnastics, tend to have a more demanding, structured form of coaching, a higher rate of injury, and a higher rate of drop-out. These also tend to be sports that people rarely continue to enjoy recreationally into adulthood.

Other sports, such as soccer, baseball and hockey, don't require athletes to specialize early on since they continue to develop and reach their peak in adulthood.

"Other research we've conducted suggests that kids don't necessarily need lots of pressure early on to become elite," explains Dr. Côté. "If you create a coaching environment where the kids are happy and passionate they'll continue to be involved and develop their skills. If you burn kids out at a very early age, you might be left with a small group of technically gifted kids, but you may also waste talent in the process."

This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)and was conducted in collaboration with Dany MacDonald, a Queen's alumnus and professor in the Department of Family and Nutritional Sciences, University of Prince Edward Island.

Dr. Côté is the current spokesperson for the Bank of Montreal's youth soccer initiative.

Source:
Christina Archibald
Queen's University

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