Can We Really Be Sure?

I recently was involved in a debate over schizophrenic people. Schizophrenia involves two distinct parts, called 'positive', eg hallucinations and delusions, and 'negative', eg slowness to move, think, speak or react. 'Positive' because these are new experiences and 'negative' because these are every day parts of life, at a reduced level. These may occur together, separately or alternately. A person affected by schizophrenia may also experience secondary symptoms such as depression, as a result of the difficulties he or she may experience in learning to cope with day to day living.

I personally do not believe that schizophrenic people are all mentally ill.
Schizophrenic people experience hallucinations. Most commonly a person with schizophrenia will 'hear' his or her own thoughts, for example, as if they have been spoken aloud within their head. The thoughts can appear to be so loud that the person may believe that people nearby will also be able to hear them. The mind usually adjusts to this very rapidly and as a result the thoughts then appear to come from some external source. These spoken thoughts are then called 'voices' or, more technically, hallucinations. The person may also experience sounds other than voices. It is possible, using a medical imaging technique, to see changes in the speech area of the brain at the time when a person says that he is hearing the voices. This is a real experience, it is not imaginary. There can also be other kinds of hallucinations, visual, smell or taste.

How come humanity labels people who see certain things others do not? Is that fair, just because others cannot visualize the same types of things? The world is not short of an abundance of people who see ghosts and we do not label them. How come we do not label them? Is it because we all miss loved ones and want to believe there are ghosts in this world? Who are we to judge what people can and cannot see? Are we that uninformed to believe that there are things out there that only some people can see? There was a movie a while back, the name currently foregoes my mind, but the actor made a great comparison. Schizophrenic people who claim to see things that others do not is no more insane then a dog seeing a rainbow.

The second distinct part to schizophrenia is Delusions. A person whom experiences hallucinations will naturally attempt to find an explanation for what is happening. Which kind of explanation they decide on depends very much on the person involved and the culture in which he or she lives. These voices say, for example, are thought to come from the television. In a different culture, however, they may be put down to magic or given a religious explanation. These are attempts to make sense of experiences that most people do not have. To the outside world these explanations are regarded as delusions. Delusions can take many forms: persecutory, telepathic, grandiose, religious, sci-fi or paranormal. A person experiencing delusions may try to keep them secret, knowing that others would not understand. Other individuals are gradually overwhelmed and begin to act strangely according to the content of the delusional explanations.

Now how come this society can accept people seeing ghosts, but they cannot accept a person hearing a voice? I am not saying all mentally ill people are sane. I just cannot believe that they all are insane. A good amount of people would agree that given your surroundings once you are placed in an institution to deal with your mental handicaps that you will inevitably become your surroundings. Hopefully only people who are mentally ill are placed into these institutions.