Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a disorder that often develops in teen years or in an individual’s twenties. It is characterized as a form of psychosis and can have positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms include hallucinations and delusions, whereas negative symptoms include emotional blunting and decreased motivation to accomplish goal-directed behaviours. The most common form of hallucination is auditory, in which those affected often describes voices speaking to them but they often cannot tell where the voices are coming from. Delusions are fixed beliefs that are not shared by others and can often take the form of persecution in schizophrenia. This means the affected individual often expresses that they believe people are “out to get them”, spying on them, reading their minds and stealing their thoughts, etc. Antipsychotic medications are the mainstay treatment for schizophrenia but psychotherapy methods such as Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) have been found to improve the likelihood of those with schizophrenia functioning within the community.