What is harder for you to control: positive or negative symptoms?!


Question: Does your medication clear up even the negative symptoms?


Answers: Does your medication clear up even the negative symptoms?

Depends on the symptoms you're talking about. I have a psychology degree and I'm pretty familiar with the effects of medications.

I'm assuming that you mean positive and negative in the psychological sense, where positive symptoms (Type I symptoms) are the PRESENCE of a symptom of the illness (like hallucinations in schizophrenia), and negative symptoms (Type II symptoms) are when a normal response is ABSENT (like a flat affect in schizophrenia, where you don't display normal emotional responses).

Negative symptoms are almost always harder to control than positive symptoms. Generally speaking, it's much easier to make a positive symptom go away than it is to make a person start generating a "normal" behavior to compensate for a negative symptom.

Almost all neuroleptic medications such as thorazine, prolixin, mellaril, stelazine, haldol, taractan, navane, loxitane, moban, and orap are much more effective in treating positive symptoms. 1/4 of schizophrenics don't respond to these drugs at all for either kind of symptom, but the people who DO respond usually only see reduction of the positive symptoms. This means that they may not have any active psychotic symptoms, but they will still have problems with lack of motivation and building positive interpersonal relationships.

Atypical antipsychotics work better at reducing BOTH positive and negative symptoms. These drugs include clozaril, risperdal, zyprexa, seroquel, and geodon.

Both neuroleptics and atypical antipsychotics have side effects, but neuroleptics tend to have side effects that are more severe.

Most physicians use the newer atypical antipsychotics because patients tolerate them better, they have fewer severe side effects, and they help treat the negative symptoms. These symptoms may not clear up entirely, but many patients do see significant improvement.

Hope this answers your question. =)

I'm guessing you're referring to schizophrenia? Generally, in schizophrenia, the positive symptoms are easier to control with medication. Some of the antipsychotics are supposed to help with the negative symptoms, but generally do not work as well as the medicines that primarily control positive symptoms. I recently read a few papers that showed maintaining a job, even if it's part time for a couple of hours a day, helps improve the negative symptoms. Also if you need to live in a group home, trying to stay active with the other residents also tends to help. I realize this is very difficult, but it does seem to help.





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