This site is intended for healthcare professionals

Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages without signing in

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

The chronic syndrome is characterised by negative symptoms, which include:

  • Lack of motivation and initiative; decreased activity
  • Social withdrawal
  • Abnormal social behaviour, such as overfamiliarity with strangers, sexual disinhibition
  • poverty of thought and speech
  • Mood disorder
    • blunting of affect
    • incongruity
    • depression

Such symptoms may be exacerbated in a stultifying environment, such as was characteristic of many large asylums in the first half of the 20th century. The negative symptoms are strongly associated with chronic social and vocational impairment.


Related pages

Create an account to add page annotations

Annotations allow you to add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation. E.g. a website or number. This information will always show when you visit this page.