Are you or is someone you know feeling preoccupied with unusual, distressing thoughts about what reality is?

Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that causes someone afflicted to experience a "break with reality." This sounds scary, and for those with acute schizophrenia symptoms, it can be, but its nature can be a little better understood by looking at its symptoms. I'm Brandon, and I have schizophrenia (I was diagnosed in 1990). Let me tell you what I know about the disorder and its symptoms. If you suspect that you or someone you know may have schizophrenia, know that doctors and mental health professionals can treat the illness. If diagnosed and treated early, schizophrenia can sometimes be managed well.

The symptoms of schizophrenia fall into 3 major categories:

1. Positive symptoms: These are realms of experience that are present in someone with schizophrenia, but not in healthy people. These schizophrenia symptoms, called delusions and hallucinations, together make up psychosis, the state of being out of touch with reality.
2. Negative symptoms: These are behavioral traits normally present in healthy people, but reduced in people with schizophrenia. These schizophrenia symptoms include reduced emotional expressivity, lack of will to pursue goals, and more.
3. Cognitive symptoms: These are impairments in the ability to think. Symptoms of schizophrenia like these often make it difficult for someone to follow conversations and to express his or her ideas in ways others can understand.

Positive symptoms of schizophrenia

Positive symptoms of schizophrenia are those people tend to think of first when they think of the disorder. Together called psychotic symptoms, they are comprised of delusions and hallucinations.

Delusions are ideas which do not jive with objective reality, and which, in serious cases, the person afflicted cannot be convinced otherwise about. Some examples:

• A person experiencing this type of schizophrenia symptom may not recognize the boundaries between his own mind and other's minds. He may think that his own feelings directly influence those of others. For example, I remember a time when I observed a man across the room at a local restaurant who appeared to be stressed. I thought, "I can make him feel better by feeling better myself. How can I feel better for him?"
• Or, a person with this symptom of schizophrenia might think that their thoughts can control the world around him. In her watershed memoir of schizophrenia, The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks recounts a time in which she experienced fear riding in an airplane, and "knew" that only by concentrating could she keep the plane from crashing.
• Or, someone having delusions may erroneously think that others are actively thinking or talking about him. Depending on how he experiences this schizophrenia symptom, he may think others are viewing him either with disdain and disappointment, or with adoration.

Hallucinations are sensory perceptions of things which are not objectively real. Most commonly, someone experiencing this schizophrenia symptom will hear voices in his head that he attributes to entities outside himself. These will often address the sufferer by name, derogatorily. For example, before I received treatment at age 18, I heard voices telling me "Baby Brandon, you're a mixed-up kid." I believed these voices, and figured that at the time I must be infantile and powerless in some way.

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia

The negative symptoms of schizophrenia are behavioral qualities which are reduced in people with schizophrenia relative to normal. As I perceive it, these are due mostly to one's preoccupation with "what is wrong with oneself" inside. These symptoms of schizophrenia include:

• Lack of interest in/empathy for other people. That is to say, a lack of interest in learning to know people as they genuinely are. This makes it difficult to make or retain friends.
• Lack of will and energy to persist in pursuing goals. For example, when I was very sick some fifteen years ago, I would buy computer game after computer game and play each for a day or so before setting it aside (each would normally take months to complete).
• Lack of interest in pleasure or fun. Just sitting and thinking may be the preferred pastime of someone with this schizophrenia symptom.
• Speaking little or not at all, and when speaking, speaking very quietly. At one point in my illness, I believed that nothing I had to say would interest anyone else. Elyn Saks recounts a time in her schizophrenia memoir when she believed something similar.
• Flattened affect: A person may be able to express little or no emotion.

Cognitive Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Someone with schizophrenia may experience cognitive symptoms that derail their thoughts in mid-track. Some examples include:

• Disruptions in short-term memory. In extreme cases, someone may experience each moment without connection to the last. I used to go through hours when I would have no sense of the continuity of time. This was somewhat disorienting, needless to say! This schizophrenia symptom can also make it difficult to keep track of where one is in a conversation.
• Slow thinking. Someone with this schizophrenia symptom may at times have to actively "force" their thoughts along.
• Difficulty making oneself understood. Someone may use special phrases that mean something to himself, without realizing his listener may have no context to understand them. For example, in the video Schizophrenia: Heather on YouTube, Heather asks her mother take her "parnacks (sp?) shopping," leaving her mother initially at a loss. Or, someone's disconnected thinking might cause them to skip from subject to subject.

As you may glean from learning about these symptoms of schizophrenia, they are interrelated. In losing touch with reality, both physical and social, one may lose the ability to relate to it and to understand oneself in its context. Fortunately, with proper therapy and healthy living, one can recover one's perspective.

Again, if you or someone you know is experiencing several of these symptoms, know that doctors or mental health professionals may be able to help. When I first saw a psychiatrist back in 1990, it set me on the road to recovery.

Find help: Links to mental health services and directories