9781422272411

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What Is Schizophrenia?

From the conversation that I had with the group leader, I came to believe that I was to be punished for disobeying God and Jesus and not fulfilling my penance. I left the meeting in an agitated state and began to believe I was in jeopardy of going to hell. After spending the next twelve months believing that I had actually been condemned to hell with no chance of repentance … I described what I experienced. As it turned out, I had actually had a twenty- to thirty-minute hallucination that had begun when I met privately with the group member and lasted until the end of the meeting.… All I know for sure was the twenty- to thirty-minute memory was a symbolic message which I misinterpreted as actual reality. 1 The man who wrote this is an intelligent adult, a computer programmer with a family. He has also suffered much of his life from schizophrenia . The term “schizophrenia” often appears in popular culture, but among all major behavior disorders, it is perhaps the most poorly understood. Many back away from its patients as menacing or dangerous. They might use the term as an insult to others; the term “schizo” is frequently employed to rebut an argument or attack

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