Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder denoting an often chronic, major mental illness primarily affecting thinking, with attendant difficulties in perception of reality, which in turn can affect behavior and emotion. The term schizophrenia comes from the Greek words σχίζω (schizo, split or divide) and φρενός (phrenos, mind) and can be translated as "shattered mind."

Notable people affected by schizophrenia

Because schizophrenia usually strikes in young adulthood before the sufferer has had time to achieve success and because the disease worsens throughout life, there are few famous people diagnosed with schizophrenia.

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• 6025 (former second guitarist of Dead Kennedys)
• Antonin Artaud (artist, poet, actor, theater philosopher)
• Syd Barrett (founder of Pink Floyd)
• Nick Blinko (founder, singer, songwriter, guitarist and artist for Rudimentary Peni)
• Buddy Bolden (jazz pioneer)
• Clara Bow (actress)
• Eduard Einstein (son of Albert Einstein)
• Zelda Fitzgerald (painter and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald)
• The Genain quadruplets (a set of four girls who each developed schizophrenia)
• Frederick Frese (Psychologist in Ohio and current Vice President of NAMI)
• Peter Green (founder of rock group Fleetwood Mac)
• Jim Gordon (drummer for the rock group Derek and the Dominos)
• Josef Hassid (gifted classical violinist)
• H.R. Hudson (affected lightly by schizophrenia, leader of hardcore punk band Bad Brains)
• James Tilly Matthews (subject of first book-length psychiatric case study)
• William Chester Minor (army surgeon and major contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary)
• John Nash (mathematician and subject of the book and movie A Beautiful Mind)
• Vaslav Nijinsky (ballet dancer and choreographer)
• Daniel Paul Schreber (German judge)
• Phil Spector (music producer)
• Nancy Spungen (girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the punk rock band The Sex Pistols)
• Juanita Titus, the manic-depressive mother of stand up comedian Christopher Titus
• John Kennedy Toole (author of A Confederacy of Dunces)
• Gene Ray (self-proclaimed doctor of cubicism)
• Mark Vonnegut (son of the writer Kurt Vonnegut)
• Louis Wain (artist)
• Tennessee Williams (writer)
• Wesley Willis (musician)
• Brian Wilson (songwriter and member of the Beach Boys)
• Virginia Woolf (writer)
• Adolf Wolfli (artist, in the outsider art tradition)