Portal:Psychology/Selected article/3
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Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality and by significant social or occupational dysfunction. A person experiencing untreated schizophrenia is typically characterized as demonstrating disorganized thinking, and as experiencing delusions or auditory hallucinations.
Although the disorder is primarily thought to affect cognition, it can also contribute to chronic problems with behavior and emotion. Due to the many possible combinations of symptoms, heated debate is ongoing about whether the diagnosis necessarily or adequately describes a disorder, or alternatively whether it might represent a number of disorders. For this reason, Eugen Bleuler deliberately called the disease "the schizophrenias" plural, when he coined the present name.
