Residual Schizophrenia Diagnostic Criteria

The formal ICD diagnosis of residual schizophrenia rests on these symptoms, which can be evaluated by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals.

ICD-10 Criteria for Residual Schizophrenia

The following information is reproduced verbatim from the ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders, World Health Organization, Geneva, 1992. (Since the WHO updates the overall ICD on a regular basis, individual classifications within it may or may not change from year to year; therefore, you should always check directly with the WHO to be sure of obtaining the latest revision for any particular individual classification.)

F20.5 Residual Schizophrenia

A chronic stage in the development of a schizophrenic disorder in which there has been a clear progression from an early stage (comprising one or more episodes with psychotic symptoms meeting the general criteria for schizophrenia described above) to a later stage characterized by long-term, though not necessarily irreversible, “negative” symptoms.

Diagnostic Guidelines

For a confident diagnosis, the following requirements should be met:

1. prominent “negative” schizophrenic symptoms, i.e. psychomotor slowing, underactivity, blunting of affect, passivity and lack of initiative, poverty of quantity or content of speech, poor nonverbal communication by facial expression, eye contact, voice modulation, and posture, poor self-care and social performance;
2. evidence in the past of at least one clear-cut psychotic episode meeting the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia;
3. a period of at least 1 year during which the intensity and frequency of florid symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations have been minimal or substantially reduced and the “negative” schizophrenic syndrome has been present;
4. absence of dementia or other organic brain disease or disorder, and of chronic depression or institutionalism sufficient to explain the negative impairments.

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If adequate information about the patient’s previous history cannot be obtained, and it therefore cannot be established that criteria for schizophrenia have been met at some time in the past, it may be necessary to make a provisional diagnosis of residual schizophrenia.

Includes:

• chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia
• “Restzustand”
• schizophrenic residual state