Jacob's Schizophrenia Case Study

“The schizophrenic mind is not so much split as shattered. I like to say schizophrenia is like a walking nightmare.” Elyn Saks, a professor of Law, Psychology, Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California. She is just another person who is able to live out their lives with this disease called schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that affects the way the person acts, thinks, and sees the world. They often see or hear things that don't exist. Just like Jacob from “The Hitchhiker.” Jacob is a 14 year old boy who thinks a man is out to kill him even though he just wanted a ride to his house. Jacob has schizophrenia because he has most of the delusions that come with it and he fits the category for

A delusion is when a person think something is happening even though it is not. To name a few there is persecution where people think somebody is out to get them.(Like when Jacob thought the Rellik was out to get him.) There is also delusion of control where people think their thoughts are getting controlled by an outside thing or an alien. “They occur in over 90% of people who have schizophrenia” (“Schizophrenia 1) Obviously, this shows that just about everybody with this disorder get it. So, Jacob is just another statistic. To add on, Jacob has a lot of delusions that schizophrenic people have. Immediately, when the man gets in the car Jacobs imagination gets the better of him. After about five minutes of driving there was a clap of thunder and the man turned to Jacob. “There was a rumble of thunder |...| He just mouthed them making sure my parents could not see. ‘You’re dead’” (Horowitz 231). Clearly this shows that Jacob was making something up because later on in the story he kills the man. No sane person would ever do

Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that affects the way a person acts toward the world, thinks about the world and how they see the world. Jacob sees the world (the place he lives near) as a psycho zone where you should not stop to pick anybody up. And when Rellik gets in the car Jacob believes that he is trying to harm him. “They believe that others are trying to harm them or feel like they are being constantly watched” (“Schizophrenia” 1) Of course, with Jacob and his parents being so close to the insane asylum it is going to trigger some bad memories for Jacob and he is going to start thinking crazy. Moreover, in the book it has more places where it is proving that the main character has schizophrenia. On the 5th page that is when the Hitchhiker gets into the car. As soon as the man said his first word to Jacob, Jacob got immediately scared that this stranger is trying to harm him. He sees blood (dirt) on the man's wrist so he thinks that he killed someone. “I felt every bone in my body turn to jelly” (Horowitz 231). Obviously, Jacob got scared of the man because he did not know him. He also thought that the man was planting thoughts in his