Schizophrenia is the psychiatric illness about which the most misconceptions abound. It’s not so much the ‘negative’ symptoms that cause misunderstanding, devastating as they are — social withdrawal, self-neglect, flattening of mood — but the auditory hallucinations and delusions, often of a paranoid nature, that can accompany it.
Nathan Filer, a psychiatric nurse, wrote the best novel I’ve read about schizophrenia, the Costa-winning The Shock of the Fall. The Heartland, his non-fiction book on the subject, is easily as good.
Perhaps it’s the foreign nature of their experiences that gives rise to the myth that schizophrenics are dangerous. In fact they are inclined to harm themselves rather than others, and, as Filer points out, 14 times more likely to be the victims of serious crime than its perpetrators.
He takes nothing for granted, analysing all the assumptions.
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