Schizophrenia

• Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves.
• The symptoms of schizophrenia can be grouped into positive (excess or distortion) and negative (depletion or loss).
• Positive symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, and agitation.
• Negative symptoms include flat affect, alogia, avolition, anhedonia, asociality, and attention deficit.
• There is no single cause of schizophrenia, but it is believed to result from the interaction between genetic vulnerability and environmental factors.
• Risk factors for developing schizophrenia include genetics, brain chemistry imbalances, prenatal complications, drug use during pregnancy, viral infection during pregnancy, and stressful life events.