sweetschizo:

supreme–mugwump:

sweetschizo:

Cognitive symptoms are basically impairments in your brains ability to process, remember and apply information. Cognitive impairments affect memory, working memory, concentration, executive functioning, learning abilities and likely other brain related skills that we rely on.

Common consequences of this includes struggling to study, work, practice hobbies, function in our day to day lives, etc as impaired cognitive functions means that our brains ability to do stuff isn’t as it should be and thus we struggle far more than most people and may be unable to perform what we need and are expected to.

Most schizophrenics experience cognitive symptoms to some degree. It’s not known exactly why and how, but recently anti psychotic medication is speculated to play a role in the deterioration of cognitive abilities in schizophrenic people. It’s unlikely that that’s the trigger of these issues, though, and they’re thought to be an integral part of the disease despite not being in the diagnostic criteria.

The severity of cognitive issues vary, and not everyone are or will be severely disabled by their cognitive issues, but most schizophrenics struggle with cognitive symptoms to some degree and may thus have a harder time functioning in society than most people.

Cognitive symptoms deteriorate your brains ability in ways similar to brain injury, but they aren’t chronic and can actually often be retrained in similar ways. Cognitive retraining like the kinds offered to people who have had brain injuries are shown to be effective when it comes to schizophrenia related cognitive impairments as well.

damn that bit at the end is so interesting. schizophrenic brains need to heal in the same way as brain injuries. for people who say “it’s all in your head!!!!” like you’re sure right, my brain is basically injured and needs to be retaught how to function so back off x thx bye

Like the funny thing about cognitive symptoms is that they aren’t an issue with your brain FEELINGS (energy, motivation, happiness, etc) they’re an issue with your brains LITERAL ABILITIES. You can’t be expected to power through cognitive symptoms and they won’t just pass if you try hard enough cause you’re not just feeling that shits fucked shits actually very literally fucked. Cognitive symptoms are often seen as an issue of lacking effort or lacking motivation but they aren’t. They’re a very literal issue with your brains abilities and they need to be treated as such.