Schizophrenia, by the way is a mental illness, Not mental retardation. There is a difference. I know a lovely young woman with Down's syndrome. She works bagging groceries at the local market. She is as delightful as any 4 year old. When a child in the store is crying and carrying on it upsets her so badly she has to be "taken for a walk". A friend of mine that works there explained that she had been mistreated badly at a daycare center for mentally handicapped children. She tends to want to attack whomever is with the child that is crying. She's very lucky, she has a whole community that looks after her. As for being useless, there's group of young men (15-27 yrs old) that do nothing but get high and play with their skateboards in the bank parking lot while living off of parents or girlfriends on relief. This young woman contributes a lot more to the community than they do and is much better liked. So anyway, that's my 2 cents, Kuu