Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic, and often disabling brain disease that is described as a psychosis -- a type of illness that causes severe mental disturbances that disrupt normal thought, speech, and behavior. Although the term means "split mind", this disease is not a split-personality disorder. Some symptoms of schizophrenia include shocking or radical changes in behavior, decreased emotional arousal, mental activity, and inability to socialize. Schizophrenics also often report a sense of strangeness and confusion about the source of their sensations. They report feeling great loneliness, anxiety, and an overwhelming sense of being disconnected from others. A schizophrenic person may also think and communicate incoherently such as jumping from one idea to another, using vague or repetitive words, or mixing a random group of new words or jumbled phrases. Other common symptoms of schizophrenia are resentfulness, suspicion, delusions, hallucinations, irrational or catatonic behavior, inaction, silence, or loss of will. Schizophrenics may describe voices that speak directly to them or criticize their behavior. While schizophrenia occurs as often in men as in women, it appears considerably earlier in men---in their late teens and early 20's-than in women-late 20's and early 30's---. Schizophrenia affects about 1% of the American population, many times occurring as a single episode and other times lasting long periods of time.
             The cause of schizophrenia is unknown for now, but expert do have a vague idea about what causes it. They all agree that it most likely results from a complex interplay of genetic, behavioral, and other factors, similar to other brain diseases. It is widely believed that neurotransmitters, brain chemicals that allow communication between brain cells, play a role in causing schizophrenia. Genetics also seems to play a role, as schizophrenia runs in families, but there
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