Fellow blogger and friend Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. penned an informative blog post on Psychcentral that illuminates 13 of the prevailing myths surrounding schizophrenia. I know I haven’t covered that illness much on Beyond Blue. But I’m starting now! Because I know so many people affected by this complicated mood disorder. To get to Margarita’s insightful post, click here. I have excerpted from it below.
It’s safe to say that no mental disorder is more shrouded in mystery, misunderstanding and fear than schizophrenia. “The modern-day equivalent of leprosy” is how renowned research psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., refers to schizophrenia in his excellent book, Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Patients, and Providers.
While 85 percent of Americans recognize that schizophrenia is a disorder, only 24 percent are actually familiar with it. And according to a 2008 survey by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 64 percent can’t recognize its symptoms or think the symptoms include a “split” or multiple personalities. (They don’t.)
Aside from ignorance, images of the aggressive, sadistic “schizophrenic” are plentiful in the media. Such stereotypes only further the stigma and quash any shred of sympathy for individuals with this illness, writes Dr. Torrey. Stigma has a slew of negative consequences. It’s been associated with reduced housing and employment opportunities, diminished quality of life, low self-esteem and more symptoms and stress (see Penn, Chamberlin & Mueser, 2003).
So it’s bad enough that people with schizophrenia are afflicted with a terrible disease. But they also have to deal with the confusion, fear and disgust of others. Whether your loved one has schizophrenia or you’d like to learn more, gaining a better understanding of it helps demystify the disease and is a huge help to those who suffer from it.
Below are some pervasive myths — followed by actual facts — regarding schizophrenia.
1. Individuals with schizophrenia all have the same symptoms.
For starters, there are different types of schizophrenia. Even individuals diagnosed with the same subtype of schizophrenia often look very different. Schizophrenia is “a huge, huge range of people and problems,” said Robert E. Drake, M.D., Ph.D, professor of psychiatry and of community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School.
Part of the reason that schizophrenia is so mysterious is because we’re unable to put ourselves in the shoes of someone with the disorder. It’s simply hard to imagine what having schizophrenia would be like. Everyone experiences sadness, anxiety and anger, but schizophrenia seems so out of our realm of feeling and understanding. It may help to adjust our perspective. Dr. Torrey writes:
Those of us who have not had this disease should ask ourselves, for example, how we would feel if our brain began playing tricks on us, if unseen voices shouted at us, if we lost the capacity to feel emotions, and if we lost the ability to reason logically.
2. People with schizophrenia are dangerous, unpredictable and out of control.
“When their illness is treated with medication and psychosocial interventions, individuals with schizophrenia are no more violent than the general population,” said Dawn I. Velligan, Ph.D, professor and co-director of the Division of Schizophrenia and Related Disorders at the Department of Psychiatry, UT Health Science Center at San Antonio. Also, “People with schizophrenia more often tend to be victims rather than perpetrators of violence although untreated mental illness and substance abuse often increase the risk of aggressive behavior,” said Irene S. Levine, Ph.D, psychologist and co-author of Schizophrenia for Dummies.

3. Schizophrenia is a character flaw.
Lazy, lacking in motivation, lethargic, easily confused…the list of “qualities” individuals with schizophrenia appear to have goes on and on. However, the idea that schizophrenia is a character defect “is no more realistic than suggesting that someone could prevent his epileptic seizures if he really wanted to or that someone could ‘decide’ not to have cancer if he ate the right foods. What often appears as character defects are symptoms of schizophrenia,” write Levine and co-author Jerome Levine, M.D., in Schizophrenia for Dummies.
4. Cognitive decline is a major symptom of schizophrenia.
Seemingly unmotivated individuals most likely experience cognitive difficulties with problem solving, attention, memory and processing. They may forget to take their medication. They may ramble and not make sense. They may have a tough time organizing their thoughts. Again, these are symptoms of schizophrenia, which have nothing to do with character or personality.
5. There are psychotic and non-psychotic people.
The public and clinicians alike view psychosis as categorical — you’re either psychotic or you’re not — instead of symptoms residing on a continuum, said Demian Rose, M.D., Ph.D, medical director of the University of California, San Francisco PART Program and director of the UCSF Early Psychosis Clinic. For instance, most people will agree that individuals aren’t simply depressed or happy. There are gradients of depression, from mild one-day melancholy to deep, crippling clinical depression. Similarly, schizophrenia symptoms are not fundamentally different brain processes, but lie on a continuum with normal cognitive processes, Dr. Rose said. Auditory hallucinations may seem extraordinarily different but how often have you had a song stuck in your head that you can hear pretty clearly?
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