Schizophrenia is a severe mental disease that effects thousands of Americans, or only one percent of the population. Schizophrenia is defined as a disorder characterized by a range of cognitive and emotional dysfunction involving disturbances in content of thought, perceptions, language and communication skills, fluency of thought and speech, attention span, and interpersonal functioning.
             Schizophrenia was not always known as this. In the late 1800's a French physician by the name of Benedict Morel first began to study this unusual mental disorder. His studies and findings carried over to another psychiatrist by the name of Emil Kraeplin. Emil Kraeplin began his study of this disease in the late 1800's to the early 1900's. He came to give this disorder its first name of "Dementia Praecox." He believed it to be a degeneration of the brain that started out in early childhood which in time would lead to the total deterioration of the person's personality and mind. Kraeplin felt that all of the symptoms involved with this disease were traced to a physical abnormality or disease. A few years after Kraeplin called this disorder Dementia Praecox, a Swiss psychologist, Eugene Bleuler, decided to challenge Kraeplin's view on this disease and felt that a more appropriate name to call it would be schizophrenia. He said that this disease was a splitting of an individual's psychological function. He also felt that people could recover from this disease to live a normal life. Another thing that he felt was true about this disease was that it was a group of disorders rather than just one major mental dysfunction. (Abnormal Psychology)
             Schizophrenia has many different signs and symptoms. Due to the wide variety of symptoms, psychologists have divided this particular disease into four subtypes depending on its characteristics of the patient. One type of this disease is catatonic, in which th...