How do you know if someone has schizophrenia?

Question

what are the signs?

Answer 1

Schizophrenia can be hard to recognize at first and is often confused for multiple personality disorder. They are not the same. Schizophrenia is a biological (i.e. physical rather than emotional) condition, therefore it can be diagnosed and treated by a physician. The most common warning signs are obsessive compulsions and frequent mood swings which span from extreme highs to extreme lows and back again.

Answer 2

Schizophrenia people should not make a joke of this illness its a dangerous and frustrating illness.
I have a son who is only 16 and he has Schizophrenia.
I knew for about 2 years something wasn't right but it gets worse as time goes on.
He used to pace about the house all night, putting things on the cooker at 3,4 am and then going into the computer room and forgetting about them.
He was very nasty and aggressive with people,
resulting in being through out of school.
Wrecked the house threw my toy Yorkie dog across the room sad thing they don't mean to do it they cant help it.
It got to the stage when I couldn't take any more and got him help.
If you are worried about someone get them help cause honestly it gets worse.

Answer 3

Some people only care to joke about questions, apparently. Oh well...

Schizophrenia is difficult to recognize, especially since the people suffering from it are usually totally unaware of it. One indication might be if people show completely different personalities (like one day extremely precise, the next completely disorganized).

I think I read somewhere, though, that they have found a way to recognize schizophrenia in a brain scan. Just can't for the life of me remember where.

Answer 4

I had a friend that I didn't even know was suffering from schizophrenia. He never talked to himself while around other people. But his personality was a little off. He would always say outrageous, weird, and at times, mean things. One day he came up to me and grabbed my breasts and said "damn these are getting huge!" right in front of my fiancee. Shortly after that i finally found out that he did suffer from schizophrenia. After the cat was out of the bag, he got really weird since he didn't have to hide it any longer. One day i had the front door to my house open, and i started hearing a sound like someone turned on the outside water. I went to go outside and stopped dead in my tracks to find he was pissing on my flower bed and he was laughing! I shut the door quietly and locked it. I hear he is now in a institution getting help.

Answer 5

Schizophrenia is very difficult to diagnose. Even in a hospital setting as an in patient, consultants will not diagnose on a first admission.

Different people have different symptoms when it comes to Schizophrenia.

They suffer cognitive disfunction... That they smell, hear, feel, see or taste hallucinations...Hear the TV or radio talking to them, hear voices or see people next to them, have metallic tastes in the mouth...etc.
Some people experience delusion ideas...They believe that they are being persecuted, "People are out to kill me!" or that they are an important religious figure like Jesus.

Schiophrenia also has positive and negative aspects.. Positve are things you gain in your personality..Things that you never experienced before..like the delusions or hallucinations and the negative are things that you have lost like inhibitions, become depressed, the ability to converse etc.

So a diagnosis usually follows a period of assessment where someone has displayed 2 or more symptoms that they previously did not have.

More and more people are being diagnosed with a Schizo-affective disorder as it covers more ground.
Your affect is your mood and your mood can be altered my what you experience.

We still live in a very unsupportive and judgemental society. People don't want to be "labelled" as schizophrenic as lot of ignorance as caused people to look at Schizophrenics as "Mental murderers!"

Also, more and more people with these symptoms who haven't been diagnosed turn to drugs believing these mask the sound of the voices or stop them feeling scared of being persecuted or feeling paranoia.
They come into the reach of the services and most likely are given a "duel diagnosis" meaning they have more that one mental health issue that would come under a diagnosis.

On the plus side...Schizophrenia, although can't be cured, can be managed with medication. Scizophrenics can hold down jobs, form friendships and relationships, get married, have children...in other words..Live a normal, healthy life....

I mean...Who is "normal" in this mad world!!

Answer 6

They often had audible hallucinations and you may find them answering those voices. They may be delusional or paranoid. Schizophrenia and Multiple Personalities are not the same thing, by the way. The best way to tell is to have the person examined by a professional. So many diseases and disorders mimic each other.

Answer 7

the onset is in young adults and is gradual. Very difficult to detect on the early stages and most peoples pass on as weirdos: withdrawn, untidy, peculiar personalities, poor social interactions and failure in their jobs and or academic work. Eventually they develop strongly believed bizarre ideas which may be persecutory and echoing voices relating to oneself in the 3rd person and mostly of an offensive nature. The thought process is disturbed and this comes across as a "verbal diarrhoea" with poor meaning. Other interesting presentations of the acute phase are the ideas or referral there radio/hi-fi/TVs speak out one's thoughts or speak about them.
By then the effects of these are catastrophic to oneself and the families and usually individuals finish at their doctors' practice, AE or even compulsory detained. Not a nice illness.

Answer 8

Urg, people are so silly.
Schizophrenia is normally characterised by hearing voices, NOT multiple personality (which is a diagnoses within itself)

Try googling schizophrenia warning signs, or speaking to your doctor. If its a family member you're concerned about, try to speak to your family doctor and just mention that you're concerned.

Take care.

Answer 9

There is more than one personality in a person suffering from schizophrenia. One minuite they act a certain way, then another they change into someone else.

Everyone in society is schizophrenic but don't realise it!

Answer 10

Schizophrenia is characterized by profound disruption in cognition and emotion, affecting the most fundamental human attributes: language, thought, perception, affect, and sense of self. The array of symptoms, while wide ranging, frequently includes psychotic manifestations, such as hearing internal voices or experiencing other sensations not connected to an obvious source (hallucinations) and assigning unusual significance or meaning to normal events or holding fixed false personal beliefs (delusions). No single symptom is definitive for diagnosis; rather, the diagnosis encompasses a pattern of signs and symptoms, in conjunction with impaired occupational or social functioning (Source: DSM-IV -available for purchase on Amazon.com Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR).
Symptoms are typically divided into positive and negative symptoms because of their impact on diagnosis and treatment. Positive symptoms are those that appear to reflect an excess or distortion of normal functions. The diagnosis of schizophrenia, according to DSM-IV, requires at least 1-month duration of two or more positive symptoms, unless hallucinations or delusions are especially bizarre, in which case one alone suffices for diagnosis. Negative symptoms are those that appear to reflect a diminution or loss of normal functions. These often persist in the lives of people with schizophrenia during periods of low (or absent) positive symptoms. Negative symptoms are difficult to evaluate because they are not as grossly abnormal as positives ones and may be caused by a variety of other factors as well (e.g., as an adaptation to a persecutory delusion). However, advancements in diagnostic assessment tools are being made.

Diagnosis is complicated by early treatment of schizophrenia’s positive symptoms. Antipsychotic medications, particularly the traditional ones, often produce side effects that closely resemble the negative symptoms of affective flattening and avolition. In addition, other negative symptoms are sometimes present in schizophrenia but not often enough to satisfy diagnostic criteria (DSM-IV): loss of usual interests or pleasures (anhedonia); disturbances of sleep and eating; dysphoric mood (depressed, anxious, irritable, or angry mood); and difficulty concentrating or focusing attention.