I think you hit it on the head: Self-knowlege is crucial when living with mental illness. But for some people, especially those with schizophrenia, that critical realization could be VERY hard to come by.

Back about three years ago, my family, my doctors, everyone, all began talking about how I was 'psychotic', how I 'heard voices', how I had 'schizophrenia'.

Confusion. Bewilderment. Perplexment.

"I don't understand," I thought to myself. "I know I've been talking about Shalom's TVs, about how they're giving me all this inside information, and about how I know people I like are going to die. But... that stuff is all real. Why are they all of a sudden thinking that I have some sort of crazy illness? Why do they think I have schizophrenia?"

But anyway, I took it in stride, I dutifully took my medication, and life went on.

But I still didn't know I had schizophrenia.

So, one day, I decided to go off all my medication.

I'm not going to go into great detail about what happened, but I will say that approximatley two weeks later I found myself strapped on a gurney, in the seclusion room of a hospital, with a needle in my hip.

It wasn't untill six months later until I was finally discharged from the hospital.

So the question: Did I NOW know I had schziophrenia? Well, hard to say. Somtimes I did, somtimes I didn't, sometimes I just wasn't sure. Overtime, however, I have been able to accept that yes, I do have mental illness.

But back to the underlying issue -- for people with schizophrenia, it is SO HARD to know that they have it. And I'm not sure why that it -- something with people's thought process makes it tough, just as mine did for me.

For bipolar people however, I think it's much easier -- I think that their main issue is one of denial, or of just not wanting to accept the fact that they're sick. In other words, for them, at least most of them, it's not a question of being too sick to realize they're sick like it is with people with schizophrenia. So, I do think they have it much easier.

Still however, for bipolars and schizophrenics alike, it's very important that they accept the fact that they have illnesses -- or else it's going to be a long, long, very painful road.