Cognitive Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Cognitive symptoms are usually more slight comparing it with positive and negative symptoms.

The cognitive deficits may include:

• Difficulty with memory
• Problems with psychomotor skills, awkward movements without coordination (ability to perceive instructions and perform requested movement or action),
• Difficulty with paying attention
• Troubles with building sense of incoming information

Other Symptoms and Behaviors of Schizophrenia includes:

• inappropriate affect,
• disturbed sleep,
• lack of insight into the illness,
• incoherence,
• anxiety and phobias,
• violent behavior,
• comorbid substance-related disorders
• having trouble with self hygiene.

What are the Cognitive Deficits of schizophrenia?

Cognitive deficits are in the heart of schizophrenia. Because it effects the patients real-life functioning, they have remarkable negative impact on patient’ lives. These deficits hold back patients from their recovery period. Usually it accompanies with a longer hospital stays. It is important to know that Cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia can overlap with negative symptoms.

People with schizophrenia may experience a range of cognitive deficits, including problems with memory, psychomotor skills, and attention. To identify these problems, patients are given psychological tests that help distinguish premorbid traits from changes caused by the disease. The performance of patients on these tests can be broken down into several aspects of learning — such as decision-making, short-term memory, and short-term verbal learning — to help identify specific deficits and their impact on the patient’s life. For example, patients who are deficient in verbal learning (e.g., the ability to store and retrieve words for more than a few minutes) may have problems with learning and decision-making.

Many cognitive deficits may be seen during the first psychotic episode, during remissions, and in unaffected first-degree relatives. Thus, these problems may reflect fundamental features of schizophrenia and may even reveal a vulnerability to schizophrenia. Cognitive deficits are important symptoms because they can impair the person’s activities of daily living and rehabilitation. In fact, the severity of such deficits can predict how well a person will eventually function socially and vocationally.

What are the mood and anxiety related features of schizophrenia?

The DSM-IV-TR notes that schizophrenia is associated with a number of other features, including:

• inappropriate moods or emotions (e.g., smiling, laughing, or silly facial expressions for no appropriate reason)
• depression, anxiety, or anger
• disturbed sleep patterns
• unusual eating habits
• lack of insight, which can interfere with person's ability to adhere to treatment and is associated with a higher rate of relapse, more involuntary hospital admissions, and poorer cognitive functioning
• anxiety and phobias
• comorbidity (e.g., substance-related disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder)

Violent behavior is also seen in subgroups of people with schizophrenia. Key predictors of this type of behavior include male gender, younger age, past history of violence, and nonadherence with antipsychotic medications.