Schizophrenia

Introduction

Schizophrenia is a serious psychiatric disorder that causes people to lose touch with reality. The schizophrenic disorders are characterised by profound disruption of thinking and perception that affects the most fundamental human attributes including language, perception and sense of self.

Schizophrenia is one of a group of related mental conditions called psychoses. These disorders may be severe and long term and all have very different patterns of onset and outcome. Intelligence and consciousness are not always affected by these disorders, although certain cognitiveimpairments may develop over time. Perception may become disturbed, the individual may become extremely perplexed, thinking may be vague and obscure, and its expression in speech often becomes incomprehensible.