Rethink 'Negative Symptoms'

 "Negative symptoms" are a term defined by conventional clinicians and psychiatrists as "an absence or lack of normal mental function involving thinking, behavior, and perception."  In conventional clinical textbooks, specific negative symptoms include "amotivation;" "apathy"; "anhedonia," "affective flattening" or "difficulty experiencing normal emotions"; "alogia" or "poverty of speech"; and "social withdrawal."  While lived experience advocates and activists have taken up and redefined many other aspects of psychosis, there are very few first person accounts of these (so-called) "negative symptoms" nor collected writings on how these terms impact those who are labelled with them.
 
The goal of our project is to collect direct first person narratives of experiences that have been labelled "negative symptoms," lived experience perspectives on associated language, terminology and alternatives, and critiques/concerns. 
 
Like our earlier project 'Outside the Box: First Person Accounts of Visions, Quasi-Visions, Felt Presences & Alterations of Time and Space' , survey submissions collected here are anonymous and have been compiled and re-printed verbatim in a free public booklet. We will continue to add to the initial booklet as additional narratives are submitted.  Please note that this is not a research project; responses will not be analyzed or interpreted, but rather made public exactly as entered. To complete the survey, click here. To access the booklet simply click on the image to the left.