What Are The Symptoms Of Disorganized Schizophrenia?

Inappropriate Or Strange Emotional Responses

Disorganized schizophrenia will often present with inappropriate or strange emotional responses. The way an individual responds emotionally to situations is also called their affect. There are two main components of affect: internal and external. The internal component is how a situation makes them feel on the inside. The external component is how they express those feelings on the outside. Disorganized schizophrenia patients will typically exhibit flat affect when emoting, which means there are few to zero emotions shown in their mannerisms, vocal tone, or facial expressions. Their responses to situations might be inappropriate.

For example, they might laugh at something sad. On top of lacking emotional expression, it's common for those with disorganized schizophrenia to experience further negative symptoms. Negative symptoms are related to a lack of affect, emotional expression, or communication present in neurotypical individuals. Disorganized schizophrenia patients might have blunt facial expressions and fail to make eye contact with others even while engaged in conversation with them. Problems with appropriate emotional response can be the result of other disorders as well.

Loose Associations

Loose associations are a type of thought disorder that happens in schizophrenia. When an individual's thinking becomes severely disordered, their thoughts become disjointed and disconnected because they lack connections to each other. The lack of logical progression in thinking is called loose association or derailment. A patient might jump from one concept to another without any apparent link between them. They might express thoughts they believe make total sense, but those viewing them from outside will be unable to decipher what they mean. Rather than focusing on one core thought, they might move from one idea to the next very quickly.

One type of loose association is clang association, which occurs when the individual picks the words based on how they sound through puns or rhyming, rather than what the words mean. Most clang associations tie in with schizophasia. Some of the nonsensical words might be completely made up. When the thought disorder is severe enough, the structure of the words remains preserved, but an outsider will not be able to see any connection between them.