Schizophrenia is a mysterious condition of mental health which is misunderstood by many people. Unfortunately, mass media with its films and books dedicated to this topic has created a variety of myths and stereotypes which are creating a rather negative attitude towards people suffering from schizophrenia. For that reason, it is high time to learn more about the topic and not let stereotypes to affect the communication with others.
Schizophrenia is a split personality disorder
One of the most popular false believes about schizophrenia is that people ill with this disease have a split personality disorder. Needless to say, you will hardly find a person who has never watched a film about a person whose personality was so disturbed that he or she was literally changing into different people. Unfortunately, in many films this transformation is not just about any other personality, but it is always into some dangerous character who is capable of a murder and many other dangerous things.
Certainly, people who have watched such films tend to be rather scared of individuals with schizophrenia as they seem absolutely unpredictable.
In the reality, split personalities are not typical for schizophrenia. Just like healthy people, the individuals with schizophrenia feel themselves as a complete individual. There is no dissociation of personalities in their case. Yet, there can be split mind.
Split mind is a totally different issue which is based on believing in contradictory ideas which regular people usually find absolutely absurd. The general anxiety caused with a different way of the perception of things make people with schizophrenia more prone to believing in various malicious plans of other people created against them. Even though such ideas usually do not make any sense, they make sense to the individuals with schizophrenia, that is why it is regarded to be a state of a split mind. At the same time, it does not even resemble the behaviour of the people with the split personality disorder.
People suffering from schizophrenia are dangerous
Another unfortunate result of the mass culture presenting schizophrenia to people is a popular stereotype of the people ill with schizophrenia being rather aggressive or even dangerous.
The truth is such people tend to be a way more passive than people without such a mental illness are. The culprit for it is the disruption of the logical connection which have already been described. They actually make people rather indecisive and less prone to aggression.
Still, some of the patients with schizophrenia happen to be aggressive which happens at the same level it happens to any regular person. At the same time, such outbursts of anger are not connected to schizophrenia and do not last long.
People with schizophrenia do not care about themselves
Many people find individuals suffering from schizophrenia lazy and unwilling to take care of themselves which is again, just one more results of poor understanding of the condition of such people. In the reality, because of their logical difficulties, many people with schizophrenia just require some external help for keeping up with a daily routine including hygiene or choosing clothes.
People with schizophrenia has poor intelligence
One more popular stereotype concerns the intelligence of the people with schizophrenia. The way such people understand the world differs from the way ordinary people are used to, so it is quite possible that traditional tests for measuring intelligence in such people will not work for people with this mental disease. Still, it is well-known today that there are many types of intelligence and some of them are a way more developed in people with schizophrenia than in others.
As a result, there is a number of really outstanding people who suffered from the illness including artists, writers and scientists.