Moody Minds: Dysphoria and Schizophrenia Spectrum Psychopathology

Abstract

Although often enlisted as just one of the possible mood symptoms of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, dysphoria-irritability can be particularly pervasive in patterning both the cross-sectional presentation and the longitudinal clinical trajectory. Dysphoric mood gives rise to divergent, parossistic and intense emotional states as well as to peculiar bodily feelings with a certain nuance of tension and reactivity. Most importantly, dysphoria transforms the significance of things in the world, infusing daily interpersonal experience with those preparatory features that could facilitate the nucleation of overt psychotic symptoms.