The other side of schizophrenia

 Positive symptoms represent the appearance of new behaviours, while negative symptoms are more about the absence or reduction of normal behaviours. Negative symptoms can manifest as zero motivation, lack of interest, inexpressive faces, monotone speech, few gestures, and inability to act spontaneously, or feel pleasure. In addition, they can appear years before a patient experience his first acute schizophrenic episode. Psychiatrists have names for these symptoms. Let’s start with Alogia; which means poverty of speech and it is a direct result of the disorganized thinking of the patient. It includes using fewer words, speaking in a vague repetitive concrete way, and answering only the asked questions. Some severe cases may suffer from fragmented speech without meaningful content, a condition known as “Word Salad”. Another symptom is Asociality when the patient becomes no longer interested in forming or maintaining social relationships with others. One of the most crippling symptoms is Anhedonia. Anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure anymore. You may wonder, is it so bad? Anhedonia is a real struggle for those patients. Imagine that the things that made you content and happy once are no longer enjoyable or fun. And it is not only about enjoyable things, but things may get worse and a person may even struggle in his relationships with family and friends. Patients usually skip invitations to events, parties, weddings, concerts, or even one-to-one get-together outings because they no longer think there is a point in taking part; the reward system is not functioning very well. Such withdrawal puts patients under more pressure and stress because people can’t understand what’s wrong. Social relationships usually thrive on positive feedbacks, for instance, when you go out with your friends you usually tell them that you had fun and it was a nice day and let’s meet up again soon, but patients with anhedonia don’t have these feelings. It is so incapacitating that they cannot enjoy regular things, let alone their loss of libido, and decrease of sexual desire that devastate their romantic relationships. There is also Avolition. Normal people usually take steps if they have an annoying job or task they must do. But with avolition, even the simplest task like getting out of the couch to wash the dishes can feel like climbing mountain Everest. It is a total lack of interest and motivation to be initiative which makes everyday life pretty much hard. References https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental... https://www.verywellmind.com/overview.... https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-c.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti.... https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/s... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... https://livingwithschizophreniauk.org... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3... https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/schizop... https://www.healthline.com/health/men...