Schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia, a common type of psychotic mental disorder of unknown cause and of varying severity, presents more or less characteristic disturbances of thinking, mood and behavior. The presence of disordered thinking in the face of a relatively clear sensorium is essential for the diagnosis, which is reached by recognition of specific clinical features, and the past history, course of the illness and family history, but not by physical findings or laboratory tests. Common features include misinterpretation or idiosyncratic distortions of reality, and sometimes frank delusions and hallucinations. Mood in the chronic phase of the illness is usually described as flat, . . .