Schizophrenia is a brain disease defined by psychosis or "being out of touch with reality". Symptoms include delusions which are fixed and false beliefs that aren't responsive to evidence and halucinations which are false sensory experiences.

Elyn's delusions include the sensation that she has killed hundreds of thousands of people with her thoughts. Yikes!

"The schizophrenic mind is not split but shattered"

OMG: up to 20 hours in mechanical restraints: arms and legs tied down

Does this still go on?

Every week in the US 1-3 people die in restraints. Are we so barbaric?

Why would we strap people to beds for hours?

"I don't think force is effective as treatment and I think using force is a terrible thing to do to another human person with a terrible illness."

Her experiment testing the hypothesis that "the less medicine, the less defective". Evidently psychopharmacology can help repair defects."

We all deserve a life of meaning and depth

"There are not schizophrenics. There are people with schizophrenia

Schizophrenics are people not diagnoses!

We need more research

"We must stop criminalizing mental illness"

"The humanity we all share is more important than the mental illness we may not"

We all want to work and to love.

http://www.ted.com/talks/elyn_saks_seeing_mental_illness