Top 10 Myths about Mental Illness: Myths #2 and #3

Myth #2: People with a severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, are usually dangerous and violent.

Fact: Statistics show that the incidence of violence in people who have a brain disorder is not much higher than it is in the general population. Those suffering from a psychosis such as schizophrenia are more often frightened, confused and despairing than violent.

(The movie, A Beautiful Mind, is a great portrayal of a man living with schizophrenia.)

"Schizophrenia is a serious brain disorder that distorts the way a person thinks, acts, expresses emotions, perceives reality, and relates to others. It is a life-long disease that cannot be cured, but usually can be controlled with proper treatment." (Web MD)

I thought it might be interesting for people to know about the different types of schizophrenia. I think that most of the general population have no idea what Schizophrenia is. And many people confuse it with Dissasociative Identity Disorder (DID, used to be referred to as Multiple Personalities).

Types of Schizophrenia

1. Disorganized schizophrenia – This type of presentation is characterized by disorganized or incoherent speech and the expression of inappropriate moods and emotions based on the social situation. Generally, there are no hallucinations.
2. Paranoid schizophrenia – Characterized by being very suspicious of others and often have grand schemes of persecution at the root of their behavior. Hallucinations and delusions are a prominent part of the paranoid behavior.
3. Residual schizophrenia – In this type the patient is not experiencing delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech and behavior. However they suffer from a lack of motivation and interest in day-to-day living.
4. Schizoaffective disorder – This is a combination of symptoms. The person exhibits the symptoms of schizophrenia combined with mood disorders such as major depression, bipolar mania, or mixed mania.
5. Catatonic schizophrenia – Is characterized by profound social withdrawal and isolation. There are also marked psychomotor disturbances.
6. Undifferentiated Schizophrenia – This is a subtype where individuals meeting diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia but not fitting into any of the other subtypes are placed. Also, if they exhibit the features of more than one of the other subtypes without a clear predominance of a particular set of diagnostic characteristics are placed in this category.

We've had many people diagnosed with schizophrenia come through our program, and even more diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder. Some of them are fairly "high functioning," holding jobs and living in group homes, or sometimes even on their own.

One of my "favorite?" schizophrenic clients was this big burly guy with a bushy gray beard, big belly. He was like 6'5'' or maybe taller. He lived in an assisted living center for adults with mental health, but was sent to us to be more stabilized on his medication and get closer to what we call his "base line." If you judged him by his appearance, and I think if most people saw him walking down the street, they would think, "that man looks crazy!" And probably a little daunting.

However, his most disruptive symptom was that he could hear and see fairies and little people. They would tell him to leave out candy and food for them and tell him to do other things. Unfortunately this meant that staff and other clients would find like moldy cheese on top of the fridge that he left for them and little food items under his bed or at the back of his shelves. He built a "Scarecrow" out in our courtyard to scare away evil using our broom and some of our yoga blankets.

One day he fixed up a big plate of lunch, and we assumed he was going to have his lunch. But then he fixed himself another lunch to eat and left the first plate outside on the picnic table for the little people but mostly it just started attracting bugs and flies. The worst part was that this same day the little people told him to eat a whole banana peel so he tried, but ended up gagging on it and throwing up.

Our psychiatrists increased his anti-psychotic medicine, though, and he began to return to more balanced state where he was able to have more insight that these visual and auditory hallucinations were in fact, hallucinations, and so he could return to his assisted living facility. That's kinda a success story for our program- haha.

Maybe we (my coworkers and I) seem callous that we laugh about this, however, it's nice to have a break from some of the more disturbing symptoms that also consistently come through like persons who are explosively angry and combative (usually not schizophrenic, though, more likely diagnosed antisocial personality disorder) or actively self-harming by cutting or being suicidal. For example, I was counseling a woman with major depressive disorder (recurrent, severe) who threw a book against the wall while we were talking.

Another thing I find interesting about schizophrenia is the age of onset:

• It typically begins in early adulthood; between the ages of 15 and 25.
• Men tend to get develop schizophrenia between 16 and 25 years old. Average is 18.
• Most females develop symptoms between the ages of 25 to their early 30's! Average is 25.
• Schizophrenia onset is quite rare for people under 10 years of age, or over 40 years of age.

Myth #3: Mental illness is the result of bad parenting.


Fact: Most experts agree that a genetic susceptibility, combined with other risk factors, leads to a psychiatric disorder. In other words, mental illnesses have a physical cause.


I hope that this fact can bring comfort to a lot of parents. Axis II personality disorders show more evidence of being related to early childhood trauma or lack of healthy emotional modeling or nurturing. Axis I disorders like Major Depression, Bipolar I and II, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, DID, Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective, Schizotypal, dysthymic disorder, and other variations of these. Oft times, people are diagnosed with an Axis I disorder and an Axis II disorder.

I worry a lot about Eliza and joke that I wonder what ways I've already messed her up. I know that it's inevitable that she will have plenty to talk about to a therapist when she reaches adulthood; however, I hope that genetically, she does not inherit some of the mood disorders that appear to be somewhat prevalent in our family.

One reason I combined these two myths is because when psychiatrist first began to diagnose people with schizophrenia they said that the main cause was bad mothering! They believed this for decades and said that obsessive, domineering mothers created stressed-out, psychotic kids who couldn't cope with reality.

Thankfully, we now know that schizophrenia, along with many other mental health disorders are caused by brain disease, in that the brain's structure is actually changed, with an extremely high genetic link.

Another thought I'd like to put out there is that blame and guilt that we, as parents or family members, should consider is that this is not a productive way of thinking. Instead of searching for someone to blame it on, spend the energy researching the disorders and finding out how to be the kind of support that your family member or child is in need of.

I think it's hard to not feel betrayed or angry about the presence of mental illness in yourself or your loved ones, and not ask Why me? Why my family member?

However, in my documentation and evaluations of clients at work, we look at their general insight into their situation. Some insights are labeled as good, fair, blaming, disorganized. The blaming insight is unerstandable, however, it can prevent people from going deeper into the step of how to start incorporate copings skills to help improve things.

Thoughts? Questions? Comments?

(I was happily surprised by the insightful and interesting comments I received with my last post, so hopefully I didn't get too excited about go overboard in my length and content in this post. Feel free to let me know! :))