Synonyms
schizophrenia, schizophrenic psychosis, endogenous psychosis, schizophrenic psychosis
Definition
To understand the term schizophrenia, one must first clarify the term “psychosis“. A psychosis is a condition in which the patient loses touch with reality (real life). Normally we humans perceive our reality with the help of our senses and then process it in our thinking.
In the context of a psychosis or psychotic state both can be disturbed. Schizophrenia is a form of psychosis, in which on the one hand the sensory perception can be disturbed and hallucinations can occur, on the other hand the thinking itself can be severely disturbed. The processing of perceptions can, for example, lead to delusions.
All in all, people in a psychotic state gradually lose touch with reality and thus with their lives. They find it increasingly difficult to perform the tasks assigned to them (as partners, employees, drivers, etc.). What psychosis or schizophrenia does not mean is a split personality or multiple personality disorder!
Symptoms
Overall, the clinical picture or symptomatology can vary greatly from patient to patient. Although it is therefore a disease with many faces, there is a division of clinical symptoms into 3 classes:
- Positive symptoms (you can find the positive symptoms under our topic Schizophrenia)
- Negative symptoms
- Psychomotoric symptomatology
Negative symptoms include all those symptoms that can be described as “basic symptoms” and which are not a “product”, i.e. a misprocessing of the patient. The most important negative symptoms are:
- Flat emotional life Many schizophrenics appear “dulled” in their emotional experience.
They hardly react emotionally. Many things seem “indifferent”. The facial expression appears very motionless, the voice seems monotonous and the gaze is lowered.
- Lack of words Many schizophrenics have in common that they speak very little.
They are then very monosyllabic in their answers or remain completely silent. A possible explanation for this is either a fundamental lack of thought or the so-called “thought stalling”. Here, thoughts simply disappear, so that it is no longer possible for the patients to react to requests or questions.
- Physical exhaustion Patients gradually lose their physical performance capacity.
On the one hand, due to the disease itself, but also frequently in the course of drug therapy, a very high degree of fatigue is often experienced.
- Social retreat People, who experience the world in which they live and the people they have known up to now suddenly very differently, withdraw little by little more and more. They are increasingly preoccupied with their own thoughts and fears. This often leads to a state of neglect, which can even become life-threatening if the food supply is insufficient.
- Sleep disorder Almost all schizophrenic patients sooner or later develop problems falling and staying asleep.
Often only medication is helpful in the treatment of the sleep disorder.
It is not uncommon for schizophrenic patients to experience a loss of spontaneous and unconstrained movement and the development of strange-looking movement patterns. Here, too, the symptoms can take a wide variety of forms.
- Catatonia Catatonia is probably the most extreme form of psychomotor symptomatology and occurs only rarely.
Catatonic patients are initially motionless. They do not react to any external stimuli and sometimes remain silent for days. Some remain sitting or lying very still, others adopt certain postures and remain so for hours.
Some can be brought into other postures passively and remain so. These patients have a so-called waxy flexibility (flexibilitas cerea)
- Catatonic excitation Here it comes to a completely undirected back and forth movement with oars of the arms. In the worst case, this can lead to self-injury or endangerment of others.
