Catatonic schizophrenia displays two types of symptoms, excited or withdrawn. “Excited catatonic patients show excessive activity. They may talk and shout continuously and engage in seemingly uninhibited, agitated and aggressive motor activity. These episodes usually appear and disappear suddenly without cause. Withdrawal catatonic patients tend to appear stuporous-mute, negative, and basically unresponsive. High degree of muscular rigidity” (Lefton, 2002 p.554). Withdrawal patients go into a catatonia state where they are basically “frozen” and would sit in their own feces if it was not for external care. In the ancient times people that were in a catatonic state would be put in cages and mocked by the public, this is where the term freak in a cage comes from.
Undifferentiated schizophrenia is when a patient may display such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations or may seem as a disorganized type, but then become totally coherent and capable of dealing with reality and living independently. Then can becomes totally disconnected from all reality.(Lefton, 2002) These people experience many different types of symptoms, which puts them in this category because they exhibit symptoms from paranoid and disorganized. Positive and negative is seen in these patients. “Some patients experience all the primary features of schizophrenia- prominent delusions, hallucinations, incoherence and grossly disorganized, catatonic, paranoid, or residual. Individuals with these characteristics are said to have undifferentiated type of schizophrenia” (Lefton, 2002 p.554)
Residual type show many symptoms of having schizophrenia but they remain coherent and capable of dealing with reality and can live independently. They may have delusions at times. Some may call this borderline schizophrenic. Usually there is a lack of motivation or interest in life. These symptoms can be the most devastating for the patient and cause depression. These people tend to be loners and not function well in social settings at times they may function as a normal human but their symptoms may onset at anytime. Sometimes these people will seclude themselves in their homes going into hiding because they know that people are noticing their subtle schizophrenic symptoms.
These positive and negative symptoms are not easy to deal with “Schizophrenia is associated with an increased risk of suicide, physical illness mortality” (Null, 2000 p.241). Obviously it is very hard for schizophrenics to deal with their lack of connection to reality and the people around them. Some of the delusions experienced by these patients are known to be very terrifying, such things as monsters chasing them, or seeing people being killed and believing what they have seen to be real. Then once they go into remission and learn that their beliefs are not reality and their reality is tricks of their own imagination. It is very depressing for them to deal with and can result in them taking their own life.
The first sign of schizophrenia is the lack of the ability to think logically and have a meaningful conversation. Schizophrenia only “affects one in one hundred people in Canada and occurs most often among lower socioeconomic groups, non whites and younger people” (DSM-IV 2000 p. 302). Many schizophrenics do not get married. Many schizophrenics for an unknown reason become very dependent on nicotine. It is not known why, but the majority of them smoke (Narrowmore, 1984)
Many people do not understand the immense complexity of schizophrenia and just assume that there is only one type. There are many different types of schizophrenics. These schizophrenics experience many different symptoms, negative and positive. Some schizophrenics can function independently and others need assistance for every basic task from going to the washroom to eating. There are five types of schizophrenia identified as disorganized, paranoid, catatonic, undifferentiated and residual.