• Question: What's schizophrenia and what does it do?

    Asked by widow to Hayley, Jimi on 18 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Jimi Wills

      Jimi Wills answered on 18 Mar 2016:

      schizophrenia is a condition where the part of the brain responsible for though, emotion, and behaviour aren’t connected properly, and this results in the person not perceiving the world very well – they misunderstand a lot – and behave a little “wrong” for the circumstances.

      it can be very serious, espcially if not treated.

    • Photo: Hayley Moulding

      Hayley Moulding answered on 18 Mar 2016:

      Schizophrenia is a mental health problem. What this means as schizophrenia makes changes to your brain. There are slight changes in the way the brain is made and its structure as well as the different connections that are made between all the little cells. What these changes cause are differences in the way these people understand things. Theses changes can cause people to hear and see things that other people don’t see or hear. They might start to believe that someone is ‘out to get them’ but they aren’t really. The way they understand ‘reality’ is different to the way someone without schizophrenia understands reality. There are changes in their brains which causes changes to behaviour as well as sleep. Their sleep is very different and they don’t go through the same ‘stages’ of sleep as other people. Schizophrenia is really difficult to understand without having schizophrenia. Imagine if someone told you that instead of you holding a cup to drink your tea, you were holding a banana! You see a cup but someone else sees a banana. Usually what people see is quite scary, but sometimes it is okay and they don’t mind. Schizophrenia makes a lot of changes to that person. This is a really good question, as we are always trying to understand more about schizophrenia. It is part of my job.

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