It's good to be back. I just read an interesting statistic. Schizophrenia is ranked 4th worldwide in terms of burden of illness. The top three are depression, alcoholism, and bipolar disorder. I thought that was interesting how severe society's burden is in caring for people with mental illness and how poorly how society does helping the families.
Schizophrenia is characterized by episodes of psychosis - being out of reality.
It is not about losing touch with reality. It is very difficult to think abstractly when has the illness and over time one actually loses some intellectual ability. Other problems involves difficulty in concentrating, thinking in an organized, or thinking in a distorted way - like having delusions. It is very common for people with schizophrenia to hear voices. These are called auditory hallucinations.