One of my biggest pet peeves is when people misuse the term "schizophrenic". It is often being said when one should be saying, "multiple personalities". For example, on Project Runway Michael Kors described an outfit as being schizophrenic in regards to the fact that it looked like it had been designed by multiple people. This is a common misconception with schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia involves hallucinations and delusions. Often one imagines people who aren't really there, or they have delusions of grandeur. With schizophrenia is paranoid schizophrenia, where one believes that someone, usually the government, is after them. Schizophrenics do not take on multiple personalities--that would be Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder.
So the next time you think about throwing around the term "schizophrenic", think twice. There are people out there who have to live with this, and when stated it can have a negative connotation. The world is slowly starting to accept mental illness, but it's still frowned upon. Make an effort to use real adjectives to describe things appropriately--not misusing an illness.
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