Schizophrenia is a lot more traumatizing to a person than most people realize. People usually perceive the mental illness, schizophrenia, to only having split personalities. One moment you may be you, but then moments later you will act like a completely different person. Schizophrenia is so much more than that and that is what the author is trying to prove. Lori Schiller is co-author of the novel, "The Quiet Room", in which she describes in great detail, the most horrifying time of her life, but the novel also draws on the words of the doctors that treated her and the family and friends who suffered with her.
             Much like most people I also was ignorant to the fact that schizophrenia is a disease that has nothing to do with a person's upbringing, but accurse when a person's brain "breaks", as one of Lori's doctors put it. A persisting theme throughout the novel is that schizophrenia is not caused by a poor upbringing, in opposition to prior belief. That was one of the things that made it so hard to believe that there was something horribly wrong with Lori. Lori was the perfect child. She succeeded at everything she tried. In high school she was popular, a cheerleader, and a straight A student. She also had a wonderful family life, living in a close-knit, upper middle class setting. She was even best friends with her mom as a teen and had always been her daddy's little girl, her being the only daughter. Her brothers had also always admired their older sister and looked on to her as where they wanted to be when they grew up, so Lori being seriously ill seemed out of the question. Lori's father being a psychologist made it even harder for him to come to terms with her illness and he blamed it on himself believing he pushed her too hard and that she had this disease because of her upbringing.
             The fact that it is quite hard for another to understand just what it is like to live ...