The best way to better understand schizophrenia is to get to know someone who is coping with that diagnosis. It is very likely that someone in your circle of acquaintances has personal experience with some form of schizophrenia or a related mental illness.
No, paranoid schizophrenia does not usually get better with time. Paranoid schizophrenia requires professional treatment, often including both psychotherapy and medication.
Most people do not believe that people with schizophrenia are possessed. Even if the general attitude towards schizophrenia is more negative than it should be, possession is not a common belief about schizophrenia.
Yes. Schizophrenia is partly genetic, meaning that if you have a relative with schizophrenia you are likely to also have schizophrenia. About 1/10 of people with a relative with schizophrenia develop schizophrenia, compared to 1/100 people without a relative with schizophrenia.
People with schizophrenia usually have normal cognitive function at the beginning of the course of schizophrenia.
Many people with schizophrenia do have trouble sleeping. One study suggested that 44% of people with schizophrenia meet the diagnostic criteria for insomnia.
Approximately 285 000 people in Australia have schizophrenia.
About 1.1 percent of women are diagnosed with schizophrenia. About half of people with schizophrenia are women.
Yes. Although most people with schizophrenia have other health conditions, especially substance abuse disorder, many only have schizophrenia.
About 1% of the UK population are diagnosed with schizophrenia at some time in their lives; most of these are between ages 15-45. 20% of those suffering from schizophrenia fully recover; 60% make a partial recovery; and for the remaining 20% it becomes a long term problem source: http://www.bicpa.ac.uk/gdg/schizophrenia.html
13 or 25 percent of people with schizophrenia, according to two different studies, have obsessive-compulsive symptoms. That represents a significant proportion of people with schizophrenia. Yes, obsessions are normal with schizophrenia.
The chance of the child of someone with schizophrenia also having schizophrenia is about 10 to 15 percent.
People who have schizophrenia have a distorted perception of reality, and tend to have delusional beliefs. They often do not understand that they have a mental illness, and even if they do understand that, they may not believe that they can be helped, or that psychiatrists could be trusted to help them. If they have paranoid schizophrenia, they will often think that other people are hostile toward them, even when those people are actually trying to help them.