Schizophrenia is a serious mental disease that affects a
person’s thoughts, behavior, moods, and ability to work and relate to others.
Many people with schizophrenia hear or see things that are not really there,
have strange beliefs that other people do not share, or speak and behave in a
disorganized way for others to understand. For the schizophrenic, the world is a
confusing maze of nightmares from which one cannot wake up.
People with schizophrenia display a wide variety of symptoms and
behaviors. Despite these diverse qualities, all schizophrenics share an
inability to distinguish reality from fantasy. This characteristic is what
unites the different forms and subtypes of schizophrenia into a single disease.
Doctors use the term "psychosis" to describe mental
illnesses like schizophrenia, in which the person is incapable of separating
what is real from what is imagined. People with psychotic disorders often cannot
comprehend that they are mentally ill. To a schizophrenic, the voices he hears
in his head or the demons he sees waiting to poison him are as real as the house
he lives in.
Getting schizophrenics to recognize the fact that they are ill
and need help is therefore one of the major challenges for doctors who treat
this severe mental disorder. Moreover, doctors consider psychotic mental
illnesses to be much more difficult to evaluate than the other type of mental
illnesses called neuroses. While neuroses can be very serious, neurotic patients
keep a firm grip on reality. This makes them more likely to understand the
nature of their mental problem and to recognize that they actually have a
problem.
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