Symptoms

Schizophrenia consists of three stages. The initial ‘prodromal’ stage is often characterised by deterioration in personal functioning including non-specific symptoms such as a lack of motivation, social isolation and difficulty concentrating. This can be followed by an ‘acute’ phase typically marked by positive symptoms (meaning they are not seen in healthy people) such as hallucinations, delusions, behavioural disturbances such as agitation and distress, and disorders of thinking so that speech becomes muddled and hard to understand.

If these acute problems resolve, usually after some treatment, the positive symptoms may disappear or reduce, which is known as the ‘residual’ or ‘recovery’ stage, but it is common for negative symptoms such as poor motivation, poor self care and poor memory and attention to remain problematic.

Co-morbidities including depression (up to 90 per cent during the prodromal stage), social anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and drug and alcohol misuse are common.