Harvard Health - The negative symptoms of schizophrenia

“About 25% of patients with schizophrenia have a condition called the deficit syndrome, defined by severe and persistent negative symptoms.”

I am one of those.

“Patients with schizophrenia perform poorly on tests of mental fluency and flexibility, especially word fluency (producing words belonging to a given category) and the capacity to sustain attention and shift its focus when necessary. Studies suggest that these cognitive limitations affect real-world functioning and the outcome of the illness even more than negative symptoms do.”

So true for me.

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“These “negative” symptoms are so called because they are an absence as much as a presence: inexpressive faces, blank looks, monotone and monosyllabic speech, few gestures, seeming lack of interest in the world and other people, inability to feel pleasure or act spontaneously. In psychiatric terminology: blunted or flat affect (emotional inexpressiveness and apparent unresponsiveness); alogia (poverty of speech); asociality (apparent lack of desire for the company of others); anhedonia (apparent inability to show or feel pleasure); and avolition (lack of will, spontaneity, and initiative).”

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Its due to dopamine dysfunction. Things which improve dopamine function can improve these too.

Parkinson disease share many of the symptoms listed in this. Parkinson disease is due to progressive loss of dopamine producing neurons. In this regards things which are useful for PD can also be found useful for reducing negative symptoms.

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