Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is described as a group of psychotic disorders in which personal, social and occupational functioning is deteriorated as a result of disturbed thought processes, strange perceptions, unusual emotional states and motor abnormalities. It is a debilitating disorder with tremendous social and psychological costs both to the patients, as well as to their families and society. The symptoms of schizophrenia can be grouped into three categories: positive symptoms, negative symptoms and psychomotor symptoms.
Patients with schizophrenia experience apathy and an inability to start or complete a course of action. This is called:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Avolition
Apathy and an inability to start or finish what one has set out to do are a deficit, so the answer lies among the negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
Option (1) Alogia — Incorrect. Alogia is poverty of speech, a reduction in speech and speech content. It concerns talking, not starting or completing an action.
Option (2) Blunted affect — Incorrect. In blunted affect the person shows less anger, sadness, joy and other feelings than most people do. It concerns emotions, not action.
Option (3) Avolition — Correct. Patients with schizophrenia experience avolition, or apathy and an inability to start or complete a course of action, the loss of volition (will) listed among the negative symptoms.
Option (4) Derailment — Incorrect. Derailment is a formal thought disorder, a positive symptom: the person shifts rapidly from one topic to another, so thinking becomes muddled and illogical.
Note: The passage of this case study is NCERT’s own opening paragraph on schizophrenia, almost word for word, and the questions on it come from the book’s symptom lists. NTA lifted the paragraph that opens the topic; read the disorders chapter line by line, symptom lists included, and these five questions become easy marks.
NCERT (2025-26): “Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders … Schizophrenia is the descriptive term for a group of psychotic disorders in which personal, social and occupational functioning deteriorate as a result of disturbed thought processes, strange perceptions, unusual emotional states, and motor abnormalities. It is a debilitating disorder. The social and psychological costs of schizophrenia are tremendous, both to patients as well as to their families and society.…” “Symptoms of Schizophrenia 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.…” “…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.…” |