Schizophrenia is a very serious mental affliction where the person loses touch with reality. There are many types of schizophrenia and each one has its own specific symptoms. Among the most common types are:
– Paranoid schizophrenia – this is the most common among all the types of this mental illness. People who suffer from this type of schizophrenia feel that the whole world it conspiring to harm them in some way or other. They would be constantly feeling that others around them are conspiring to cheat, kill, poison, betray, or harm them in any other way.
There could be audio-visual hallucinations that have them believe that people are saying things to them, ordering to harm themselves or people whom they love or are close to them.
– Disorganized schizophrenia – in this type of schizophrenia the patient experiences total garbling of thoughts as a result of which he cannot speak, write or emote appropriately. The behavior is extremely stressful to all concerned. Since the behavior and thought are completely out of context, the patient is unable to take care of himself.
– Catatonic schizophrenia – as the name indicates, this type is characterized by the patient feeling clumsy and uncoordinated. The affected person would tend repeat themselves over and over. Sometimes, the patient’s expression freezes and becomes totally unresponsive – i.e. catatonic. This type of schizophrenia is quite rare today.
– Undifferentiated disorder – this is a totally untypical schizophrenia. In other words, the patient is clearly diagnosed as schizophrenic, but the symptoms are not consistent with any particular type of schizophrenia.
– Residual schizophrenia – this is actually not a type of the disease; rather a period where the symptoms are fading away and flaring up in turns while the illness has been successfully brought under control. In this case the severe symptoms are no longer prevalent; however, without treatment there is a high risk that they would return.
Major Differences Between Undifferentiated Schizophrenia And Disorganized Schizophrenia
As you can see from the above there are many types and sub-types of schizophrenia. The major difference between these two types of schizophrenia is that while the disorganized sub-type is characterized by a certain set of symptoms, the undifferentiated sub-type does not have any fixed symptoms; rather it borrows symptoms from all the types of schizophrenia.
