ABSTRACT
According to the World Health Organization World Mental Health Report, it is believed that 16 million people suffer from schizophrenia: ''The stigma of 'madness' attached to mental illness is still a potent barrier that prevents many of these people from receiving help.'' Individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia have a higher mortality from natural causes than the general population; 50 percent of individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia attempt suicide, and 30 to 50 percent meet the diagnostic criteria for substance abuse. Regardless of the controversies regarding the cause or causes of schizophrenia, it remains irrefutable that schizophrenia affects individual patients, each of whom has a unique psychological make-up. Motivated in the very first place by fear, the schizophrenic psychoses originate in a break with sincerity, and not in the classically assumed ''break with reality.'' Sperry characterizes schizotypal personality disorders as part of the DSM-IV clusters which describe individuals as engaging in odd, eccentric, and bizarre behaviour.
