Schizophrenia is a major psychiatric condition, which affects the centre of the personality, with severe problems of perception, and cognition as well as affective and social behaviour

... Schizophrenia is a major psychiatric condition, which affects the centre of the personality, with severe problems of perception, and cognition as well as affective and social behaviour (Do, Trabesinger, Kirsten-Kruger et al., 2000). There are currently no diagnostically relevant biological markers for schizophrenia: thus, schizophrenia is diagnosed according to internationally accepted clinical criteria, such as DSM-IV (APA, 1994). The concept of positive and negative symptoms (derived from the work of Jackson [1931]) was re-introduced in schizophrenia by Strauss and his colleagues in 1974 (Provencher, Fournier & Dupuis, 1997). Positive (Type I) symptoms are defined as a distortion or exaggeration of normal function. These include: thought disorders (disorganised, irrational thinking), hallucinations (perceptions of stimuli that are not actually present), and delusions. In contrast, the negative (Type II) symptoms of schizophrenia (based on the concept of deficit) are defined as a diminution or loss of function and represent the absence of behaviour

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