I happened across this article - I am always trying to find good ways of explaining this aspect of schizophrenia, and thought this article lays it out nicely.
4 Likes
@Vallpen excellent article! thank you for posting that!
2 Likes
I swear, negative symptoms might the hardest aspect of the illness to understand.
My son has a pdoc appointment today. He really dislikes me reporting symptoms to the doctor. I am able to communicate with the doctor outside of the appointment, so that helps.
I think this time I am going to try a different approach. Instead of saying, I think my son is experiencing negative symptoms - which I have actually already communicated to the doctor, I am going to ask, ‘Can you explain more about what negative symptoms of schizophrenia are?’ and ‘What are ways to treat negative symptoms?’
3 Likes
I like that approach - maybe I’ll borrow it.
I’m a very direct person, so learning to deal with my son diplomatically has been a major life lesson - one that I’m still learning. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not necessarily bad to be somewhat manipulative
I liked the article too. It had a lot of information in it that I hadn’t considered before. I always thought of negative symptoms as being negative in that they’re bad, rather than something someone had lost.
Maybe it’s because my son was so young when he became ill, and I had actually noticed lack of emotion earlier than that - and just thought it was him. For example, we’d take him and his friend to the local amusement park pretty often and he’d be so straight faced sometimes that I’d have to ask him if he was having fun. He’d say yes, but you couldn’t tell by looking at him. He was always sensitive, always a little anxious and shy, so eye contact was never good. It’s really hard to see where he crossed a line into something more serious.
This is my son to a T., thanks