The Schizophrenic Liberation Front was inspired as a reaction to a
well meaning yet dangerously naive document found by one of its
founding members in the waiting room of a general practitioner's office 
in Melbourne Australia.
The document is a booklet about Schizophrenia distributed by the 
Schizophrenia Fellowship of Victoria Inc.

The following is an exerpt from that (unintentionally) offensive booklet.
Hyperlinks are to commentary from the SpLiF, questioning these "experts".

WHAT IS SCHIZOPHRENIA?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Schizophrenia is the most common of the serious mental illnesses.
It is encountered in all races, colours and creeds, 
and is responsible for taking up more hospital beds than 
any other single condition.

It is also the world's most misunderstood illness.

Schizophrenia (from two Greek words meaning "split mind") 
is actually not one but a group of illnesses with common features.
Untreated, they can lead to a disintegration of a person's personality.

Schizophrenia is a psychosis; 
that is, an illness which the patient cannot at times 
distinguish between reality and fantasy,
or has great difficulty in doing so.

This leads to behaviour that seems odd, confused, bizarre
or even frightening to the onlooker.

It happens because the links between perception, thought, emotion,
drive and behaviour are split from each other.
Where a healthy person's actions are a result of clear perception,
logical thinking and controlled emotions and drives,
the schizophrenia sufferer has no such ability.
There is little, if any, relation between what he perceives, 
what he thinks, how he feels and, as a result, how he acts.
These functions take on seperate, alien qualities, to the point where 
he cannot understand what is going on inside himself.
He is, as one noted psychiatrist observed,
"a dreamer wide awake", but the dreams are mostly nightmares.

In extreme cases, he loses the notion of 'self', that he is an independent,
self motivating person unique and seperate from the rest of the world.
He may even believe that he is not a 'person' at all.
Small wonder that his behaviour becomes abnormal.

Schizophrenia affects people to a greater or lesser degree -
not all become oevertly psychotic.
Not all the person's funtions may be disabled,
and parts of his personality may remain intact.
Nevertheless, his functioning will be affected in some way,
even if only slightly, to the confusion of relatives and friends.

______________________________________________

Transcribed for the Undesirable Propagation Unit.