What is Schizophrenia?

Every time I've approached people online about this, they just call me stupid and give me answers that to me apparently have nothing to do with it. The most I've learned about Schizophrenia was from the "Schizophrenia for Dummies" book I found online.

One ground fact I want to get across to anyone new to schizophrenia is that it is not multiple personality disorder. There is no "Jacob #2 says hello". That has absolutely nothing to do with Schizophrenia.

This actually taught me a lot, and the main thing I bring up that everyone just hatches an egg about is, the different types of symptoms. Positive, Negative, and Cognitive. Don't get the wrong idea with the Positive symptoms, that's just the title. Its still schizophrenia and in reality there's nothing positive about it.

Negative Symptoms:

• An inability to experience simple pleasure from people or things
  around him: This is known as anhedonia.
•  Lack of initiative, motivation, or willfulness: This is known as avolition.
•  Lack of or limited speech: The person may be slow in responding, have
  only a limited range of response, or not even respond at all. This is
  known as alogia.
•  A lack of emotions or feelings: The person may look expressionless —
  not showing any signs of happiness, excitement, or anger. This is known
  as flat or blunted affect. Some research suggests that this may be more a
  matter of appearance rather than a reflection of the individual’s inability
  to feel emotions

Positive Symptoms:

• Hearing, in the form of auditory hallucinations: The person hears voices
  or sounds that aren’t there. Auditory hallucinations are the most
  common type.
• Sight, in the form of visual hallucinations: The person sees something
  that isn’t really there. Visual hallucinations may be visions or signs to
  which the individual with schizophrenia attaches great meaning or
  significance.
• Smell, in the form of olfactory hallucinations: The person smells odors,
  usually bad ones, like rotting organic matter, that no one else smells.
• Touch, in the form of tactile hallucinations: The person feels the presence
  or touch of someone or something when no one is actually present.
  People with both mental illness and substance-use disorders commonly
  feel bugs crawling over their bodies (sometimes as a result of using
  cocaine).

Cognitive Symptoms: 

"If the person returns to school or work, tasks that were in the past very
doable, can now seem insurmountable. For example, the person may be
unable to focus or concentrate. Neuropsychologists have devised and
administered very specific tests to identify the particular thinking problems
and where they occur in the brain.

Working memory (the ability to hold a fact in mind to be used later — for
example, to remember that the 4 p.m. train will be on track no. 5 has been
found to be impaired in many people with schizophrenia, as have verbal abilities.
Cognitive symptoms make it extremely difficult for some people with
schizophrenia to carry out what seem like simple tasks or to be able to hold
down a job. For example, people with this type of cognitive problem should
choose jobs that maximize their skills and minimize the need for working
memory. (It might be difficult for them to be waiters who have to remember
complex orders in a busy restaurant.)"

 The disease till today has absolutely no cure, but there ARE treatments, and you CAN in fact overcome the disease. Some people live with it for life, some kill themselves, but there are select possibilities that someone can literally grow out of the schizophrenia. The common ages for schizophrenia to occur are roughly around ages 21-24, so if you're young you have nothing to worry about. Though it is quite possible obviously.