Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that is characterized by a variety of symptoms and the disorganization of feeling and thought. It is an incurable disease whose causes are unknown, yet whose effects are mind and body crippling. (Young, 1988, p.13-14) This topic was chosen because it is interesting to study a disorder that worldwide, is viewed as a classic example of madness and insanity. Another reason of interest is because unlike many illnesses, schizophrenia doesn’t have a noticeable pattern and its difficulty to be diagnosed as a disease makes the collection of statistics difficult. It is important to learn more about schizophrenia because a significant numbr of people are affected everyday by it. In the United States alone, schizophrenic patients occupy more hospital beds than any other type of patient. Schizophrenics also account for nearly 40% of admissions to state and county hospitals. (Smith, 1992, p.32) In the research of schizophrenia, perhaps the best way to begin its study is to look at its past and history. Although it is just to assume that today’s definitions of schizophrenia may differ from the past’s, it is logical to aslo include the fact that it existed as far as history can go. Many people during the 1800’s were often dubbed as insane because of the dizorganization of thought and feeling that existed. (Smith, 1992, p.28) Later in the 1800’s, more stories grew about the “insanity”, and in the beginning of the 1900’s, doctors began to name this illness dementia praecox, meaning “mad” or “out of one’s mind.” In 1896, schizophrenia was recognized as a mental illness by a German psychiatrist named Email Kraeplin. His recognition of the disease was made after a careful study conducted on people hospitalized for mental disturbances. Then, in 1911,a German physicist named Eugen Blueler renamed it schizophrenia because of the disorganiza...
