Schizophrenic patients can exhibit signs of reduced physical or mental activity by sitting at one place and doing nothing for hours. The patient can also stop all voluntary activities like talking, eating, moving etc. On the other hand, Schizophrenic patients can exhibit signs of high level of excitement by shouting, talking fast and acting in a violent manner. These are two extreme symptoms of Schizophrenia out of the many listed below.

Common Symptoms of Schizophrenia include:

Hallucinations - The person can touch, feel, hear, smell and see imaginary things, which do not exist in reality. Such symptoms are because of the deterioration in the brain's reception, as a result brain responds to fake sensory input.

Hallucinations can be further classified as:

Tactile Hallucination: A person experiencing this can feel imaginary hands touching him or can feel insects moving all over his body.

Auditory Hallucination: The person who suffer from such hallucination can hear and communicate with a person that is non-existent in real life. Sometimes, he can also hear someone constantly talking to him. He might even hear an inner voice to tell him about impending danger.

Olfactory Hallucination: The person can smell things that no one can.

Visual Hallucination: The person experiencing this type of hallucination can see things and people who do not exist in reality. He is able to share thoughts with his imaginary friends and spend time with them.

Mood swings - A person experiencing mood swings can be extremely happy at one moment and extremely sad at other moment. Such a person is very unpredictable and experiences difficulty in maintaining a good rapport with people around him.

Nebulous thinking - A person who suffers from nebulous or distorted thinking is not able to process his thoughts in an orderly manner. As a result he is imprecise in the expression of his thoughts and might keep on speaking in a vague manner which no one can understand. He is unable to process his thoughts, therefore making it hard for him to go about his daily activities.

Emotional Instability and Social withdrawal - The person who is emotionally unstable and socially withdrawn is scared and lacks confidence. He prefers to be alone than to go out and intermingle with people. His relationships both personal and professional are affected because of his behavior.

Illusions - A person who has illusions tends to have compromised perception. He perceives something that is inconsistent with the reality.

Perplexed - The person will feel frightened, confused and not confident about himself. This might occur in combination with hallucination where a person is instructed or warned by a voice about some kind of approaching danger.

Delusion - The most common symptom experienced by Schizophrenic patients. Close to 90% of all Schizophrenic patients suffer from delusions. When a person undergoes delusion, he holds to his belief whether or not it is true.

For example, if a person is not rich or famous and everybody around him knows that. This person might think otherwise and behaves like a famous movie star or like a person in an eminent position. Another type of delusion is in which the person might feel as if he is being observed and controlled by some unfamiliar forces.