Chris Coffey age 12, of Salt Lake City, Utah, for his question:

WHAT CAUSES A SPLIT PERSONALITY?

Sickness of the mind is called mental illness. It could involve a mental breakdown so serious that the patient would have to receive special care in a hospital, or it could be a simple personality quirk that produces personal unhappiness and can be corrected by treatments provided in a doctor’s office.

It is estimated that about 20 million people in the United States suffer from some form of mental illness, and almost 550,000 patients are admitted to mental hospitals every year. About one third of the nation’s hospital beds are presently occupied by mental patients.

What causes mental illness? There’s no easy answer to that question. But experts believe that a happy home life during a person’s early years can do more than anything else to prevent many of the mental illnesses that could develop in later years.

Doctors divide mental illnesses into two general types: organic and functional. Organic mental illnesses result from defects that develop in the brain before birth or when injury or illness later causes damage to the brain. Functional mental illnesses involve no apparent physical changes in the brain, yet the mind does not work properly.

One of the functional mental illnesses is commonly called a split personality. Schizophrenia is the correct name for the sickness which often leaves the patient’s intelligence in a normal state but which doesn’t allow his emotions to fit real life situations. Schizophrenia does not mean that the patient has more than one personality.

Schizophrenia can be found in several forms and is the most frequent psychosis found among patients in mental hospitals. The patient may be emotionally disturbed, aggressive and destructive. Often he will return to childish behavior and be unable to care for himself. Most patients have difficulty in adjusting to reality and some withdraw into fantasy and hallucination.

Doctors in general, unfortunately, can rarely prevent or cure schizophrenia, but they often are able to help the patient. Mental illnesses are diagnosed and treated by psychiatrists, physicians who have been trained in the specialty of mental health. Psychotherapy is a major type of treatment. This medical assistance involves talks between the psychiatrist and the patient which give the patient a chance to talk out his deepest feelings toward those who have played important parts in his life. The treatment often enables a patient to realize that relationships with people do not always cause discomfort.

Various forms of psychotherapy differ in goals according to how the patient needs to be helped and how much change the patient can make in his own personality. Psychotherapy can attempt to give the patient confidence or help him understand the nature of his problems.

At other times the psychiatrist tries to uncover unconscious reasons for the patient’s feelings in order to help him understand his actions.