What it means to be a Schizo

I find it interesting that while pop culture usually gets the gist of diseases like bi-polar or ADHD, schizophrenia is sorely misunderstood.  I'll admit, I feel into the category of believing a schizophrenic is someone who has multiple personalities.  The essential core of the traditional idea of a "crazy person."  But the true diagnosis of the disease is absolutely nothing like that.  And I find my compassion for sufferers of it has grown exponentially since truly understanding its nature.

This is how most people view schizophrenia, though
technically they are referring to multiple personality
disorder.

Schizophrenia does mean "split mind" but not in terms of personality.  Rather, it refers to the disorganized thought patterns which its victims suffer.  The symptoms of schizophrenia can be essentially split into three camps: postitive, negative, and cognitive.

I should give fair warning that positive does not mean sufferers get some sort of benefit from the illness.  Positive means that on top of regular behavior, patients have these symptoms added on top of normal functioning.  Disordered thinking, delusions (often about either God, the devil, or the president), hallucinations (often auditory), paranoia, and repetitive behaviors fall into this "positive" category.

The extrasensory nature of them makes them positive, whereas negative symptoms take away from normal functioning.  Some of these symptoms could be seen in other types of mental illnesses.  Lack of emotion (emotional flatness), social withdrawal, lack of self-care, lack of goal-oriented behavior, and catatonia (absence of behavior) all fit into the category of negative symptoms.

Lastly, there are cognitive impairments.  Schizophrenics have trouble focusing their attention, using their working memory, reversal learning tasks, initiating goal-oriented behavior, and often take others literally.  Sometimes, if a schizophrenic patient is asked, "think of a sentence and then write it."  They will write on the paper, "it."

With so many different categories of symptoms, treatment of schizophrenia has been extremely difficult.  The possibility of multiple varieties, each with a unique neural basis, has been posited and further research is required.