Schizophrenia- Severe disorders on which there are disturbances of thoughts, communications, and emotions, including delusions and hallucinations.
             (Psychology: An Introduction,Charles D. Morris with Albert A. Maisto)
             It's quite horrendous. First of all, you've got somebody that you love, a child that you've raised. And then suddenly, the child becomes a crazy person. Better drugs and new ways of treating schizophrenia are enabling more of the disease's victims to live in society instead of institutions, and even to hold down jobs. Schizophrenia can be detected in childhood--even traced to the womb. These malfunctions may be wired into the brain before birth. There is mounting evidence that schizophrenia reflects deviation in development rather than a backwards process that begins in maturity. Scientists,whose findings have already paved the way for a greater understanding of schizophrenia, and researchers around the world are hunting for underlying causes of the disease. People diagnosed with schizophrenia display a wide-ranging breakdown of perception and thought. A glitch in the timing of cell responses across broad swaths of brain tissue may help account for these people's fragmented experience of the world, according to a new study.
             In the brains of schizophrenia sufferers, electrical activity fails to synchronize with a specific sound frequency as it does in the brains of mentally healthy people. Improved drugs to fight psychosis--the loss of contact with reality that afflicts schizophrenics--are already coming on the market, and some researchers believe that within the next few decades, scientists will find a way to virtually cure the obscure disease.
             Schizophrenia usually begins between the ages of 16 and 30, with men often being affected earlier than women. The first symptoms can include trouble concentrating or sleeping, and afflicted people may start avoiding their friends. In the next stage, many schizophrenics ...