What are characteristics of schizophrenia that make it hard to treat? List at least 5.

Hallucinations- a person hears, sees, feels, or smells something that is not actually present. Most often this occurs in the form of hearing voices that others do not hear. These voices may be reassuring, threatening, or anything in between.

Delusions- false beliefs held by a person that are not shared by other people. Someone with a delusion has a very fixed view of a situation and cannot be talked out of it with reason.

Disorganized thinking and speech- difficult to understand because their sentences are unconnected or because the person is frequently switching topics in a way that doesn’t make sense to the listener. However, the speech may have meaning for the individual in a way that is connected to their internal experience.

Decreased emotional expression-It is a lack of showing emotion characterized by an apathetic and unchanging facial expression and little or no change in the strength, tone, or pitch of the voice.  

Lack of initiation in goal-directed activities