[sillysaurus2]

You can make someone schizophrenic.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Schizophrenia is a physical illness. Your brain physically deteriorates. You can't make anyone schizophrenic any more than you can make them lose an arm. In fact, making them lose an arm would be much easier than making them schizophrenic.

[tazjin]

No, there is a large amount of factors that have been linked to being able to cause schizophrenia. There is no final answer to the debate at the moment.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_schizophrenia

[sillysaurus2]

Interesting... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_schizophrenia#Urbanic...

"A particularly stable and replicable finding has been the association between living in an urban environment and the development of schizophrenia, even after factors such as drug use, ethnic group and size of social group have been controlled for.[142] A recent study of 4.4 million men and women in Sweden found a 68%–77% increased risk of diagnosed psychosis for people living in the most urbanized environments, a significant proportion of which is likely to be described as schizophrenia.

The effect does not appear to be due to a higher incidence of obstetric complications in urban environments.[144] The risk increases with the number of years and degree of urban living in childhood and adolescence, suggesting that constant, cumulative, or repeated exposures during upbringing occurring more frequently in urbanized areas are responsible for the association.

Various possible explanations for the effect have been judged unlikely based on the nature of the findings, including infectious causes or a generic stress effect. It is thought to interact with genetic dispositions and, since there appears to be nonrandom variation even across different neighborhoods, and an independent association with social isolation, it has been proposed that the degree of "social capital" (e.g. degree of mutual trust, bonding and safety in neighborhoods) can exert a developmental impact on children growing up in these environments."

So it does seem that it's inflictable, though we don't quite know by what. I can see that brainwashing may trigger it if someone was genetically predisposed to it. One theory may be that living in an urban environment is more of a trigger for those who are genetically predisposed to it. It seems like genetics is a requirement, though, suggesting it's not inflictable at will.

[bobsgame]

Yeah. We do sort of know why, it's just not exactly something that is easily proven or explicitly demonstrable through scientific method.

However, anyone who has gone through a bad breakup and gone a bit wacky has felt what emotional stress can do to the mind, you see it all the time seeing couples arguing and yelling psychotic things into the phone and slamming it, etc. It jams up the conscious process! Too much of this does cause schizophrenic states, and left unresolved can cause significant damage.

[bobsgame]

Please look up schizophrenia and the connection to brainwashing victims.

(Unfortunately it is difficult to sort through real information vs forum posts written by schizophrenics whose minds are attempting to blame imaginary targets because they cannot determine the real cause.)

[sillysaurus2]

Would you please enlighten me? I've spent a lot of time researching schizophrenia and I've never come across anything that would suggest it's inflictable.

[bobsgame]

Malicious mind control techniques (gaslighting, etc) can cause a victim to doubt themselves, damaging the psyche, causing paranoia, and leading to a psychotic state, sometimes semi-permanent. The mind needs to resolve some issues and without doing so it will accumulate cognitive dissonance. Mania induced by these psychotic states can actually cause physical damage to the brain. It is not known exactly what causes schizophrenia but it is known that it can be the consequence of these sort of psychological stressors, i.e. people lose their shit and have breakdowns when they get too emotionally damaged.