How One Woman Describes Living With Schizophrenia

Michelle Hammer is a New York resident with schizophrenia, a serious mental disorder. She shares her journey.

Michelle Hammer wants you to know schizophrenia. To know the illness is to know her. 

"I go, 'listen, no couches were harmed in the making of this video.'… People with schizophrenia can have a job or actually speak to people or can do things themselves," said Hammer. 

Schizophrenia is a brain disease and patients' symptoms run a spectrum. They can include negative symptoms like social withdrawal or psychosis, when someone is detached from reality. Usually it looks like hallucinations: Seeing or hearing something that isn't there; or delusions: Fixed false beliefs that a person can't change.