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Stockpot has a very good over view of the diagnosis of these disorders. For more info on the disease spectrum go to “schizophrenia” in Yahoo! web search. Wikipedia has a good summary. The public understanding and misinformation on these disorders is abysmal. For example; several answers here assume, even state, it is a “splitting of the mind”. It is not that. That was a term used in the dark ages of psychiatry (late 1800’s to early 1900’s). For schizophrenia paranoia it is “hearing voices” and “seeing things” others can not sense.The “voices” are like mental telepathy. The trauma of these experiences leads one to come up with some rational explanation of what is causing them leading to various “delusions” or false beliefs. Delusions are very common in modern society so this is not so strange. Schizophrenics are no more violent than any other “normal” person. Good luck with your research, good mental health, peace and Love!
There is no actual disease called schizophrenia. It is a catch-all term for profound mental illness. The mental health professions vacillate (go back and forth) about the meaning of “schizophrenia” because it is an attractive word to use as a label, even though an actual definition has never been nailed down. In a nutshell, if someone presents with what might be called “profound” mental illness, it is very likely that someone may label the person a schizophrenic. Edit: Sorry about that Aimee. I’ll try to make it easier. Schizophrenia is a 100 year old term. It’s usage in medicine has undergone change. But in law it always means you’re nuts or need serious medication. It is because of this unchanging ‘legal’ meaning that the word’s popularity has survived over time. The term schizophrenia is not useful medically because it has never referred to a specific illness. Instead, it refers loosely to any assortment of bizarre (really wierd) behaviors that people might want to assign such a lab
