People with schizophrenia experience unusual perceptions, strange thoughts, disturbed emotions, and motor abnormalities. They also experience psychosis, which is a loss of contact with reality. Schizophrenia can make it difficult for people to function at home, with friends, at school, or at work because their ability to perceive and respond to the environment becomes extremely disturbed. They may have hallucinations or delusions, or they may retreat into a private world. About 1 in 100 people in the world suffer from schizophrenia in their lifetime, and an estimated 24 million people worldwide suffer from this disorder, including 2.5 million in the United States. Schizophrenia is more common in lower socioeconomic groups, but appears in all groups. Theorists are not entirely sure whether or not there is a correlation between poverty and schizophrenia because it could simply be that people with this disorder tend to fall from high to low socioeconomic statuses because their disorder makes it difficult for them to function effectively. Schizophrenia is diagnosed the same in men and women, but the average age of onset is different; the average age of onset for men is 23 years, while for women it is 28 years. About 3% of divorced or separated people suffer from schizophrenia at some point in their lives, compared to 1% of married people and 2% of single people. Much like the uncertainty between schizophrenia and poverty, theorists are unsure whether or not marital problems are a cause or result of this disorder. In schizophrenia there are three groups of symptoms: positive symptoms, negative symptoms and psychomotor symptoms. Of...... half of the document ......eu on a course of action. Ambivalence causes people to have mixed feelings about most things. It is not uncommon for people with schizophrenia to withdraw from social environments; they might do it because they just want to indulge in their own ideas and fantasies. Psychomotor symptoms may include awkward movements or repeated grimacing and strange gestures. Catatonia is an extreme form of psychomotor symptoms; people in a catatonic stupor are unresponsive to their environment and remain motionless and silent for a long period of time. Another type of catatonia is catatonic rigidity, in which people maintain a stiff, upright posture for hours and refuse to move. Catatonic posture is characterized by awkward and bizarre positions that last for a long period of time. Catatonic arousal is when people move with excitement; they may flail their arms and legs wildly.