Schizophrenia isn’t ‘split personality’, a psychiatrist explains the myth pop culture keeps repeating

‘The most common one I come across, even today, is people assuming schizophrenia means multiple personalities. It doesn’t. These are two separate conditions, and we treat them very differently,’ says Dr Divya Nallur, clinical director at Amaha, a mental healthcare provider.

According to her, much of the confusion stems from history as much as medicine — the word ‘schizophrenia’ itself led many people to associate the illness with split personalities, a misunderstanding that popular culture amplified over decades. Schizophrenia is actually a psychotic disorder affecting how a person perceives reality, marked by hallucinations, delusions and disorganised thinking, along with ‘negative symptoms’ such as reduced motivation and diminished emotional expression.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), by contrast, belongs to an entirely different category of psychiatric conditions. It is characterised by two or more distinct identity states and is usually associated with severe, prolonged trauma, especially in childhood, along with memory gaps and disruptions in a person’s sense of identity.

Dr Asha, a psychiatrist at Bengaluru’s SPARSH Hospital, said the same misunderstanding continues to surface in clinical practice, with popular media inaccurately portraying schizophrenia as a ‘split kind of personality’ despite it being shaped by genetics, brain chemistry and environmental factors. ‘In order to improve understanding and reduce stigma surrounding both of the disorders, good public education is very much essential,’ she said.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Dr Partha Sarathi Sahana