Negative symptoms include the inability to show emotions, apathy, difficulties talking, and withdrawing from social situations and relationships.

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia are those involving the absence of something common to most people. This can include lack of communication, social interaction, and motivation. Though less obvious than positive symptoms like hallucination and delusions, negative symptoms can be just as hard to cope with.

As negative symptoms indicate deficits in functioning they are also called deficit symptoms. Negative symptoms, including lack of emotion, decreased joy or motivation, delayed speech, and difficulty beginning and sustaining activities,1 can be scary and extremely debilitating.

If you are the family, friend or carer of someone with schizophrenia, these are some things you can do to help:

1. Focus on the person’s strengths – the things they enjoy or are good at.
2. Keep reminding them that they have a role as a member of their family and community.
3. Consider doing a family psychoeducation program.

Impaired attention is considered a primary cognitive deficit in schizophrenia. Individuals who are genetically predisposed to schizophrenia have poor ability to maintain their attention even prior to the first psychotic episode (Cornblatt et al 1985).

Mental illness. Hearing voices is very common with schizophrenia. The voices may seem to come from inside your head or outside, like from the TV.

People with schizophrenia may have a number of psychotic symptoms. These symptoms can come and go in phases, or they can happen only once or twice in a lifetime. When the illness begins, psychotic symptoms are usually sudden and severe.

Some people are naturally quiet and don’t say much. But if you have a serious mental illness, brain injury, or dementia, talking might be hard. This lack of conversation is called alogia, or “poverty of speech.”

Negative symptoms include decreased thought and speech productivity (alogia), loss of ability to experience pleasure (anhedonia), decreased initiation of goal-directed behavior (avolition), and speech with little or no change to their tone, little or no change in their facial expression, even if they are talking about …

The alternative meaning of alogia is inability to speak because of dysfunction in the central nervous system, found in mental deficiency and dementia. In this sense, the word is synonymous with aphasia, and in less severe form, it is sometimes called dyslogia.

People who experience anhedonia have lost interest in activities they used to enjoy and have a decreased ability to feel pleasure. It’s a core symptom of major depressive disorder, but it can also be a symptom of other mental health disorders. Some people who experience anhedonia don’t have a mental disorder.