I seem to be in a list-making mood tonight, and thought I’d make up a list of MPs on Charley who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, or were thought to have it but were not officially diagnosed. I believe it may be most common mental illness diagnosis among my cases, although depression and bipolar disorder are more prevalent in the general population.

For the uninitiated, schizophrenia is a terrible mental disorder that usually starts in adolescence or early adulthood, although it can strike later or earlier in life. People who have it may have delusions of various kinds, and/or hallucinations, hearing voices and so on. But it goes beyond that; their whole personality and thought process are shattered, and they have a very high rate of suicide.

Schizophrenia is a profoundly disabling condition. Although the person’s intelligence is unimpaired, many of its sufferers aren’t able to complete their education or live on their own successfully, and many of them wind up homeless or in jail. However, contrary to popular belief, they are usually NOT violent and are much more likely to become the victim of a violent crime than to commit a violent crime, because other people take advantage of them.

There are psychiatric drugs to control the symptoms, but they have mixed results as far as how well the work, many of them have bad side (even potentially life-threatening) effects, and it’s often a job to get the person to take the meds at all, since a common symptom of schizophrenia is not believing you are sick. And on top of everything else, you will see from my MPs that the illness is frequently co-morbid with other mental illnesses as well as alcoholism and drug addiction.

If you want to learn more about it, you can of course check out the many and various mental health websites, but there’s a lot of writings on personal experience out there. I’ve been following the blog of Michael Schofield, whose daughter January has severe childhood-onset schizophrenia, and am slowly reading my way through six years’ worth of posts on the blog Schizophrenia: A Carer’s Journal, written by a British man whose adult son has the disease and has been in and out of hospitals and other institutions.

I’ve also read The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, a memoir by Elyn Saks, who is a very high-functioning schizophrenic. The doctors basically wrote her off after her diagnosis, but she got degrees from Vanderbilt, Yale and Oxford, became a successful lawyer advocating for the mentally ill, and won a McArthur Genius Grant a few years ago.

Anyway, back to Charley’s schizophrenic MPs, in the order which Google spat them out at me. There are over a hundred of them:

Audrey Lyn Nerenberg

Rachel Louise Rice

Clifton Patrick Leonard

Adam Christopher Kellner

Steven James Needham

David Ristovski

Jennings Lee Hart

Merle LeRoy Ryan

Margaret Ann Unger

Richard Burks Hart

Penney Faye Cruser

Faith Marie Van Nortrick

Arlene Day Abbas

Jerald M. Gelb

Paulette Susan Jaster

Kevin Edward Lenting

Jeffrey Lynn O’Carroll

Joseph John Formica Jr.

Elizabeth Turvey Brown

Alvin P. Bradshaw

Stacey Jane Morrison

Dedrick Bernard Smith

Destiney Ann Hicks

Neal Louis Boware

Mouy Tieng Tang

Abril Marie Magdaleno

Faime Lynette Francis

Lucely Aramburo

Gerald William Carroll Sr.

Rita R. Rahn

Robert Albert Ahtonen

Julia Christine Aul

Ricky Laverne Bethea

Terry Lynn Hattaway

Robin Joy Heitger

Gabriel Ovando

Laura Lee Alber

Matthew Nolan

Aaron Michael Torres

Travis Bingham

Travis Jeremy Wilson

Elmer Coron

William Charles Jones

Jennifer Jean Gordon

Raul A. Martinez

Ricky Wayne Anderson

Ruth Sharon Hoffman

Edith Margaret Claver

Wendy M. Kimura

Elizabeth Ann Lande

Beverly Ida Harrington

John Chocha Jr.

Jennifer Marie Peters

Mark David Zeichner

Brenda Nell Dearing

ReJean Joseph Bowman

Barry Keith Douglas

Laura Ann Breding

John Clifton Butler

Pamela Pendley Biggers

William Ensley Hipp III

LaTonya M. Hill

Salvador Bonadona

Marilyn Lanier

Vickie Ramona Baliel

Gaudencio Cazarin Carbajal

George Alfred Davisworth III

Calvin Ray Deets

Cathy Dickson

Lisa Lee Chandler

Edward James Terrebonne IV

Bonita Landi

Maurice Tyrell Cammon

Louis Jefferson Wills

Steven William Branston

Kamau Jawara

Robert T. Hiney

Arturo Nunez

Donald Beams Wallace

Jack Eugene Waller

Alfredo Gonzalez

Elissa Rachel Martin

Mary Alice Cox

Yu Chin Chang Goodson

Wade Michael Aughney

Cris Tademy

Luke Robinson

Carl Joel Swinney

Thomas Patrick McLaughlin

Rossana Miliani

Robert Carl Rock

Dennis Lee Anderson

Sherline Johnson

Stephen Wayne O’Neall

Michael Allen Jarvi

Sherry Audrey Walker

Tracey A. Jessup

James Johnson Jr.