Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

As far as literary mental diseases go, schizophrenia is the go-to guy. Not quite to the level of amnesia in soap operas, but it’s still a wildly popular disease for your villain to have. Where amnesia gives the soap opera writers a chance for a Mulligan on an entire story line without having to resort to an alternate universe hypothesis, schizophrenia provides authors with a host of useful traits in a villain, while still being able to portray them as human beings struggling with a very real disease.

The symptoms may be a gold mine for writers, but they are hell for the person that actually has the disease, not to mention those that have to live with them. Hallucinations, often accompanied with delusions are enough to derail anyone’s life. I’ve seen this combination up close and personal, in one case, the subject believed he had wished another person dead (the delusion), and then proceeded to see her dead self everywhere. (hallucinations). The second subject believed himself chosen by god to cleanse the world of unspecified evil, which angels would visit him and tell him who needed to be killed today. Fortunately, he never actually managed to act on these messages.

In addition to that wonderful duo of symptoms, schizophrenia sufferers may experience catatonia, extreme apathy, and generally have a hard time controlling their own emotions. It isn’t as rare as people think, psychiatric associations put the likelihood of having it at 1 out of every 100 people in the population. It is not, as popularly believed, the same thing as multiple personalities. While the Schizo part of the word schizophrenia does refer to a break, or split, it is reality that the patient has split from, not themselves.

If you’re going to make your villain schizophrenic, you’re probably going to have to make him a chain smoker as well. Research has found a strong correlation between both smoking and the strength of the smoking addiction and incidence of schizophrenia. In a slightly ironic twist, they are now looking at cells in the nose of patients as a way to accurately diagnose the disease. A blood test is also in the works, but it may be that a simple nasal swab could be the way to diagnose this in the very near future. Right now this is a more invasive procedure than an influenza swab, as the doctors need to get nerve samples from as close to the brain as possible. Hence the going in through the nose maneuver, I suppose it does beat drilling holes in the skull.

Sounds rather painful to me, and I have to admit that all I could think about reading the details of the procedure was ancient Egyptian mummy making, but then I’m not a big fan of doctors in general. For those suffering, treated is better than untreated, although given that they may not perceive reality in at all the same way as the rest of us, convincing them of that fact may be a challenge.

Cheers,

Michelle