Please inform your readers that people with this disease do not have split personalities and don't pose a threat to society. Schizophrenia is a mental affliction characterized by impaired functioning and disturbances in thinking, feeling and behaving. Patients with this disorder exhibit enormous variation in their degree of dysfunction. For instance, mild schizophrenics suffer minimal thought disorders and function surprisingly well in our society, although they may need periodic prescription drug therapy and close psychiatric monitoring. Such patients often require prolonged hospitalization and large doses of medications called psychotropics.
Some schizophrenics are incapable of living in an open society.
Most simply withdraw from reality as we know it, engage in delusional thinking and have difficulty controlling internal drives. To a large degree, a schizophrenic's maladaptation is a function of his or her delusions. The person who believes that he is the Messiah or who feels menaced by those around him is not going to do well and, at the very least, will be an object of ridicule. Further, many schizophrenics behave unpredictably, hallucinate and inadvertently draw attention to themselves. This strange behavior can be frightening to normal people, who often discover that dealing with schizophrenics can be an unsettling experience because of the aggressive outbursts and the threats of violence which characterize the disease.