Positive and negative symptoms in psychotic and other psychiatrically disturbed children

The positive and negative symptom distinction has been found to be valid in research on schizophrenia in adulthood. The present study examined age-related changes in the occurrence of positive and negative symptoms in psychiatrically disturbed children who were receiving psychiatric treatment for the first time. The effect of age on the manifestation of positive and negative symptoms was significant; positive symptoms increased linearly with age, while negative symptoms were most frequent in early childhood and late adolescence. This finding held for the entire sample of children, as well as the subsample of children with psychotic diagnoses. There were few sex differences in the rate of symptoms, although age trends varied somewhat by sex. Examination of the relation between symptomatology and IQ revealed that high-IQ children showed greater positive and fewer negative symptoms than low-IQ children. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of examining developmental differences in positive and negative symptoms.