It seems the so called experts can't nail it down either. There was a news item the other day that stated a study that found that most people diagnosed with schizophrenia had expeiranced a traumatic event early in life. How that comes out as schisophrenia they could not say. I had a childhood friend who was diagnosed with it ( mild) and lost him to suicide. As a result I read a bit about it. Most people confuse it with MPD and expect most people with it to be violent but they are no more violent than the general public. As i understand it there is a defect in the brain that does'nt let the brain filter out the unconcous thoughts in the brain filtering over to the other parts hense the vioces and visions. Most people with it also have higher than normal IQs. One of the big problems is a lot of suffers do'nt think there is anything wrong and refuse to take their meds witch can be bad if those vioces are telling them to harm themselves.