In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both show signs of what would today be diagnosed as symptoms of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is defined as "a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment, by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life, and by disintegration of personality expressed as disorder of feeling, thought, and conduct." There are three major symptoms of the disorder; not being able to distinguish the difference between fantasy and reality, incoherent conversations, and withdrawal physically and emotionally. The most common and most well known symptom of schizophrenia is when people cannot distinguish...
a nightmarish dream. Imagine not being able to tell if these things were real or just a figment of your imagination and you'll know the position that Macbeth and lady Macbeth were in. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both show signs of what would today be diagnosed as symptoms of schizophrenia. They became detached from reality and spoke in crazy incoherent sentence fragments. Though they were not able to identify Macbeth and his wife's mental illness during Shakespeare's time, now after many years of research, it seems very probable that the two characters were most likely schizophrenics.