Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a severe brain disorder, affecting the sufferer's ability to think clearly and decipher fantasy from reality. The disorder may develop gradually and it may therefore take a while for the individual, or their family, to realise anything is wrong. Coping with the symptoms of this disorder can be especially tough for the family members who remember how the person was before they became ill. The disorder seems to develop at an earlier age in men (late teens to early twenties) than women, who are generally affected in their twenties to early thirties.
Most people suffer either chronically or episodically from the disorder throughout their lives, enduring terrifying symptoms such as hearing voices that others cannot hear and believing others are plotting against them and reading their thoughts. It is a common assumption that schizophrenia means 'split personality', however this is incorrect. The term schizophrenia was actually introduced by a Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler and stands for 'split mind' in Greek. Bleuler wanted to convey the split of the personality from reality, and not the split into two personalities.