Read the following Case-Study and answer the question that follow.

Vijay graduated from college and got a job at a local grocery store. After working for six months he began to hear voices of people hatching a plan to poison him. He stopped eating and drinking anything in the shop as he felt it tasted bitter and looked green in colour. He reported smelling strange odour in the shop, He would take long winding detours on his way home as he felt people were following him. He told his family that the supervisor was against him and would one day burn down the shop in an attempt to kill him. One day he slapped a customer and swore that someone else made him slap him using his hand. No evidence was found to support his allegations.

Vijay is suffering from _____ symptoms of the disorder.

Positive

The correct answer is Option (1) → Positive

Positive symptoms of a psychological disorder, particularly schizophrenia, refer to excesses or distortions of normal functions. Vijay exhibits several of these:

• Hallucinations (hearing voices, smelling strange odours, tasting bitterness)

• Delusions (persecution and control)

• Disorganized behavior (slapping a customer and claiming someone else controlled his hand)

These are all positive symptoms, meaning they are added to the normal experience of reality.

"The symptoms of schizophrenia can be grouped into three categories, viz. positive symptoms (i.e. excesses of thought, emotion, and behaviour), negative symptoms (i.e. deficits of thought, emotion, and behaviour), and psychomotor symptoms. Positive symptoms are ‘pathological excesses’ or ‘bizarre additions’ to a person’s behaviour. Delusions, disorganised thinking and speech, heightened perception and hallucinations, and inappropriate affect are the ones most often found in schizophrenia.

Negative symptoms are ‘pathological deficits’ and include poverty of speech, blunted and flat affect, loss of volition, and social withdrawal. People with schizophrenia show alogia or poverty of speech, i.e. a reduction in speech and speech content. Many people with schizophrenia show less anger, sadness, joy, and other feelings than most people do. Thus they have blunted affect. Some show no emotions at all, a condition known as flat affect. Also patients with schizophrenia experience avolition, or apathy and an inability to start or complete a course of action. People with this disorder may withdraw socially and become totally focused on their own ideas and fantasies.

People with schizophrenia also show psychomotor symptoms. They move less spontaneously or make odd grimaces and gestures. These symptoms may take extreme forms known as catatonia. People in a catatonic stupor remain motionless and silent for long stretches of time. Some show catatonic rigidity, i.e. maintaining a rigid, upright posture for hours. Others exhibit catatonic posturing, i.e. assuming awkward, bizarre positions for long periods of time. "