What comes to your mind when you heard of the disease “schizophrenia”? In your mind, do you imagine a “crazy” person talking non-sense to him or herself? If it is what you had in mind, then you are most likely misunderstanding what schizophrenia really is. This article attempts to clarify the common misconceptions about schizophrenia and focus on telling the readers what the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia are.

Schizophrenia has both positive and negative symptoms. However, in this case, the word “positive” doesn’t suggest anything that is good to the schizophrenia patient’s health. Positive symptoms refer to the extra perceptions and emotions schizophrenia brings to the patients; they include hallucinations and delusions. They cause the patients to feel and experience many ideas in their minds that do not actually exist, in reality. On the other hand, negative symptoms are subtler. Nevertheless, negative symptoms such as emotionless and monotone speech can also have negative impacts on the schizophrenia patients’ lives. 

People commonly misunderstand schizophrenia because they are only aware of the positive symptoms such as delusions. However, some schizophrenia patients can have both the positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Just because a patient is emotionless on his face doesn’t mean that he isn’t fighting with schizophrenia. An important lesson to be learned from this article is that schizophrenia doesn’t always have to be dramatic; it can also cause someone to be seemingly emotionless. 

Disclaimers: The information above has not been reviewed by an expert.