A large portion of the homeless population is made up of people with intellectual disabilities. About a third of homeless people have a condition called schizophrenia or suffer from manic depression. Schizophrenia is a long-term mental disorder that breaks the connection between thought, emotion and behavior. This leads to misperception, withdrawal from reality, delusions, inappropriate actions and feelings, and the feeling of being mentally broken into pieces. Schizophrenia actually means a divided mind. My great-grandmother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and curiosity led me to learn about the chances that I would unfortunately inherit this gene. This disease affects one percent of the population and is called cancer of the mind. We know a lot about schizophrenia, but there is still much to discover. Learning more about this topic and the symptoms that come with it will help me spot any episodes or warning signs of members of my family developing it. Since there are several factors that influence the etiology of this disease, knowing the environmental protections to take to prevent it would be of great help. I would also like to learn more about the treatment options available and the optimal choices to choose from. Antipsychotics are widely used in patients with schizophrenia, but are there alternative forms of treatment that might help or even be better? Schizophrenia may only affect one percent of the population, but in the United States, that's a total of about 2.4 million people. Since it influences the lives of so many people and there is no cure for this illness yet, I believe that research into this psychological disorder is essential to helping homeless people find a place to call home. . middle of article....... More people with schizophrenia need help than get it. Since it is a very expensive and poorly understood disorder, people tend not to help them and just point fingers and call them crazy. I learned some of what is known about the causes of schizophrenia, but there is no real cure. I would love to delve deeper into the brain structure that causes schizophrenia. There is no easy way to treat a psychological disorder, but exposing them to the streets is certainly not the right solution. Works Cited Suzuki, Hidenobu et al. “Studying the Efficacy and Safety of Switching from Risperidone to Paliperidone in Elderly Patients With Schizophrenia.” Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 67.2 (2013): 76-82. Academic research completed. Internet. May 8, 2014. “Numbers Matter: Mental Disorders in America.” NIMH RSS. Np, and Web. May 05 2014.