Positive symptoms: Symptoms of schizophrenia that seem to be excesses of or bizarre additions to normal thoughts, emotions, or behaviors.

Psychosis: A state in which a person loses contact with reality in key ways.

Schizophrenogenic mother: A type of mother—supposedly cold, domineering, and uninterested in the needs of her children—who was once thought to cause schizophrenia in her child.

Dopamine hypothesis: The theory that schizophrenia results from excessive activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Delusion: A strange false belief firmly held despite evidence to the contrary.

Schizophrenia: A psychotic disorder in which personal, social, and occupational functioning deteriorate as a result of strange perceptions, disturbed thought processes, unusual emotions, and motor abnormalities.

Negative symptoms: Symptoms of schizophrenia that seem to be deficits in normal thought, emotions, or behaviors.

Phenothiazines: A group of antihistamine drugs that became the first group of effective antipsychotic medications.

Antipsychotic drugs: Drugs that help correct grossly confused or distorted thinking.

Formal thought disorder: A disturbance in the production and organization of thought.

Inappropriate affect: Display of emotions that are unsuited to the situation; a symptom of schizophrenia.

Hallucination: The experiencing of imagined sights, sounds, or other perceptions in the absence of external stimuli.

Alogia: A decrease in speech or speech content; a symptom of schizophrenia. Also known as poverty of speech.

Atypical antipsychotic drugs: A relatively new group of antipsychotic drugs whose biological action is different from that of the conventional antipsychotic drugs. Also known as second-generation antipsychotic drugs.

Catatonia: A pattern of extreme psychomotor symptoms, found in some forms of schizophrenia, which may include catatonic stupor, rigidity, or posturing.

State hospitals: Public mental institutions in the United States, run by the individual states.

Token economy program: A behavioral program in which a person’s desirable behaviors are reinforced systematically throughout the day by the awarding of tokens that can be exchanged for goods or privileges.

Expressed emotion: The general level of criticism, disapproval, hostility, and intrusiveness expressed in a family. People recovering from schizophrenia are considered more likely to relapse if their families rate high in expressed emotion.

Halfway house: A residence for people with schizophrenia or other severe problems, often staffed by paraprofessionals. Also known as a group home or crisis house.

Day center: A program that offers hospital-like treatment during the day only. Also known as a day hospital.

Case manager: A community therapist who offers a full range of services for people with schizophrenia or other severe disorders, including therapy, advice, medication, guidance, and protection of patients’ rights.

Deinstitutionalization: The discharge, begun during the 1960s, of large numbers of patients from long-term institutional care so that they might be treated in community programs.

Aftercare: A program of post-hospitalization care and treatment in the community.

Sheltered workshop: A supervised workplace for people who are not yet ready for competitive jobs.

Neuroleptic drugs: An alternative term for conventional antipsychotic drugs, so called because they often produce undesired effects similar to the symptoms of neurological disorders.

Extrapyramidal effects: Unwanted movements, such as severe shaking, bizarre-looking grimaces, twisting of the body, and extreme restlessness, sometimes produced by conventional antipsychotic drugs.

Milieu therapy: A humanistic approach to institutional treatment based on the premise that institutions can help patients recover by creating a climate that promotes self-respect, individual responsible behavior, and meaningful activity.

Tardive dyskinesia: Extrapyramidal effects that appear in some patients after they have taken conventional antipsychotic drugs for an extended time.

Community mental health center: A treatment facility that provides medication, psychotherapy, and emergency care to patients and coordinates treatment in the community.