Taking Complaints

Mental Illness is the most misunderstood condition of a person’s life.

Schizophrenia is a major psychiatric illness.  People often experience symptoms such as hallucinations (hearing, seeing, feeling, or smelling things that aren’t there) or delusions (unusual beliefs that other people don’t have, such as paranoid beliefs that others are against them).  They may also have other symptoms, such as low motivation, poor attention, and inability to experience pleasure.  Sometimes it is hard for people with schizophrenia to distinguish fantasy from reality.

The cause of schizophrenia is unknown.  Scientists believe it may be caused by an imbalance in neurotransmitters (brain chemicals), especially the chemical dopamine.  Imbalances of these neurotransmitters may be caused by genetic factors, early effects of the environment on the developing brain (such as when the baby is in the womb or during birth), or both.

About 1% of people develop schizophrenia during their lifetime.  Schizophrenia usually develops between the ages of 16 and 30, but may develop after that.  It is a lifelong disorder.

Schizophrenia is diagnosed with a clinical interview.  The interviewer checks to see whether a person has experienced symptoms and, if so, for how long.  To be diagnosed with schizophrenia, a person must experience a decrease in social functioning (school, work, social relationships, or self-care) for at least 6 months.  The clinician must also make sure that the person has no physical problems that could cause problems like those of schizophrenia, such as a brain tumor.

I have presented enough information to address mental illness throughout this web site (like in the Dick Tracy presentation), but I have had to speak directly about it here based on the bullish nature of the complaint.  The most likely place that I would be managing my mental illness on a day to day basis is my blog. I recommend visiting if you have a specific issue with me. The Blog is Gevluef at wordpress.

I think it is only fair to share my source for the above text.  Since it is a hand-out from Staff I decided to include the source: Schizophrenia.  Schizoaffective disorder is exactly the same as schizophrenia except it manifests in an ordinary, and understandable way.  Let me show you a Hereditary table.  Then you can reconstruct the difference.  Schizophrenia is FF+FS and schizoaffective is FF+SS.  The FF (dominant-dominant) disposition is very assertive.  It is expected that the FF disposition will mar the body; see phocomelia.