schizo-links

Schizophrenia! Kids don't try this at home.

In Japan, they use what many consider a more descriptive term 'integrative disorder'; the underlying non-hallucinatory (less Hollywood-sexy) effects are like getting your feet stuck in your own imagination or slipping around on it like a dog on ice. One of the rising theories is the root cause is a disruption in the mind's decision-making executive functions.
(http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD004727.html)

You truly are walking around in dreams, sometimes more than one at a time, compelled by dream logic. The lights are off even though someone is home. Alternatively, the lights may burn so much they melt the walls. One-third of all homeless people are schizophrenic, not because it is the ultimate manifestation of their stupidity, weakness, evil, or 'mother issues' or whatever - but because we all think through wiring that can go bad through genetic anomaly times isolation times stress.

Despite affecting one percent of the population, there are few films. A Beautiful Mind handled it most famously, but fictionalized John Nash's story to an extent that certain schizophrenics such as myself find it inaccurate. I appreciate the necessity of film to add a visual dimension like the hallucinations (which he didn't have) but failed to cover his breakdown in logic and stripped away all the other complexity of the illness (as well as character.) (http://www.holtuncensored.com/members/column294.html#books)

However the film becomes truly false at its climax: Nash's wife didn't stay with him, didn't hold his hand and say "I'm real" - she divorced him. He spent a lot of time holed up in Paris, hating her. It was only later that she let him move back into the house and only when he'd recovered and began receiving recognition again that they remarried. Not only did he not crap on about "the equations of the heart" in Stockholm, he was not allowed to give a speech.

Better films: Revolution #9, 12 Monkeys, Fight Club. The latter two don't mention schizophrenia, but trust me, they're closer than what Ron Howard got us. In literature: Slaughterhouse 5, The Day the Voices Stopped, and the excellent book A Beautiful Mind.

But first read:

http://www.schizophreniafaq.com/
http://www.chovil.com/
http://www.successfulschizophrenia.org/