The devastating mental illness of Schizophrenia is a major concern of modern medicine. Schizophrenia associates any one person with multiple problems. These problems include delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized behavior (Long 1999). The illness is a disease of the brain that is explained clinically as, disease of the mind, a simple explanation given by Nancy Andreasen (1999). It is important to understand that there are different types of this mental illness as well. The different types are the paranoid, catatonic, disorganized, undifferentiated and the residual type. In cases of the paranoid type preoccupations with one or more delusions or frequent auditory hallucinations occur. The catatonic schizophrenics suffer from at least two of the following; motoric immobility as evidenced by catalepsy or stupor, excessive motor activity, extreme negativism or mutism, peculiarities of voluntary movement as evidenced by posturing, stereotyped movements, prominent mannerisms, or prominent grimacing. In disorganized Schizophrenia flat or inappropriate affect, disorganized speech and behavior are all prevalent. The undifferentiated type is unusual in that it may have some characteristics of each of the different types. The Residual type has symptoms of odd beliefs and unusual perceptual experiences (Hoffer 1999).Illnesses like schizophrenia bring untold misery to sufferers and their families. The suffering is magnified because of the unique stigma attached to this illness. Unlike other illnesses, it marks not only afflicted individuals, but also their relatives (Reynolds 1996). For example, the concept of the "schizophrenogenic mother" was rife till recently. Such suffering is unnecessary and probably arises from fear bred by ignorance. The search for the causes of psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia - may help dispel a lot of these notions However research is hampered by the relatively few clues available about the cause...
