Schizophrenia Spectrum: Signs and Symptoms (Nursing)

00:00 So, when we are thinking about negative and positive symptoms, we're looking at 5 specific areas where they are going to have their greatest impact. The first is going to be in perceptions where we see hallucinations and perhaps a self-perception. Hallucinations are considered positive. The cognitions, the delusions, the belief in a thought despite facts and evidence that your thought is true, this delusion is also considered a positive symptom.

00:38 Behaviors. Well there's threats of violence and I'm going to say it again. In more cases than not, the threat of violence is not by a person who has a mental illness, but rather towards the person with a mental illness. The threats of violence that we often see in schizophrenia is when a person is having a hallucination and thinks they in fact are being attacked. And when they go to respond to that hallucination, unfortunately there's no one there to the rest of us and we notice these violent or aggressive kind of behaviors. That is also positive.

01:24 Social interactions, having poor social skills, unable to connect with others, not being able to carry on a conversation. This is a negative symptom. And a flat affect, not being able to have the range of emotions that would normally come with hearing good news or hearing bad news. That flat affect is also a negative symptom.