schizophrenia

Research on various psychological disorders was necessary for Cornelius' character profile, so as to help how we could determine the rest of the narrative for Premonition would unfold. Our initial idea was to diagnose Cornelius with dissociative identity disorder, similar to the characters of Norman Bates in Psycho and the narrator in Fight Club. This was because it was an obvious mental disorder that we had seen in psychological thrillers before, however we were then unsure as to how it would explain Cornelius having premonitions about the attacks. It was then determined that the character of Cornelius required a psychological illness that resulted in hallucinations and with further research on mental illnesses, we decided that to allow the narrative to be entertaining yet believable, it would be appropriate for Corenlius to be a schizophrenic.

Symptoms of schizophrenia:

• Delusions - believing something completely even though others find your ideas strange and can't work out how you've come to believe them.
• Difficulty thinking – finding it hard to concentrate, drifting from one idea to another. Other people may find it hard to understand you.
• Feeling controlled – feeling as though your thoughts are vanishing, that they‘re not your own, or that your body is being taken over and controlled by someone else.
• Hallucinations - hearing, smelling, feeling or seeing something that isn’t there. Hearing voices is the most common problem. The voices can seem utterly real. Although they may be pleasant, they are more often rude, critical, abusive or annoying.
• Loss of interest, energy and emotions. You don't bother to get up or go out of the house. You don't get round to routine jobs like washing, tidying, or looking after your clothes. You feel uncomfortable with other people.
• Some people hear voices. Others have delusions but few other problems. If someone has only muddled thinking and negative symptoms, the problem may not be recognised for years. 

A large percentage of these symptoms were the attributes we wanted Cornelius' character to have, especially those that elicited hallucinations and delusions.