Hello, Sorry but this a bit long. I am 17 and I believe I may have this disease. First off, I am pretty paranoid. I can’t walk in public places without the fear that someone is after me. Like when I am walking from the supermarket, I always look around me cause I feel like people will kidnap me and kill me. I do this as well in school but I don’t think they will kidnap me, more that they may want to just hurt me and talk about me. I hate overlycrowded places. Like when im at school and it’s very crowded, I basically run away. I don’t eat anymore in the lunchroom, i eat in my teacher’s classroom. I have had depression for over a year and i’m very suicidal at times. I hear voices for sure. For a long time, I’d be studying in my room and I’d always hear the tv on and my mom talking and I’d actually believe she was downstairs. But then when I go downstairs, the tv is off and my mom is sleeping. I hear voices tell me really bad things about myself and most of the time they convince me to kill myself. I utterly hate my life because I can’t trust those around me, I always suspect them of having this plan to make me look pathetic in public. I have 2 really bad fears: snakes and dots (trypophobia). If i see any of these, I go beserk. I had an attack during the summer because i saw a snake while i was outside, but my dad was at work, and my mom was in her home country. It took me hours before I calmed down and run back home. I kept running around the entire neighborhood like a maniac and I always visualized the snake following me. With dots, it’s a whole other story. I basically scream and just turn around. I hate dots, circles close together, all that stuff. It freaks me out. For a while, I had hallucinations that snakes came down the wall. But they were squigly, small and black. I used to look at the them but they never touched the ground, they just stayed on the wall and repeated themselves like a gif. I have become very very very unfocused in everything, I can’t complete tasks anymore and needless to say this include taking a shower before the next day of school. I talk to myself all the time and i talk to stuffed animals as well.This is bad to add but i’ve had a few interests in my life and when I find myself that i like them, I become creepily addicted to them in a weird way. I start to fantasize creepy stuff and on top of that i research everything about them. I even start to follow them and i won’t stop liking them after a long long long time. I always laugh at the wrong things, like death. When the subject of death comes up about a person or so, I actually have to hold myself from laughing. Or when like I see someone crying about something, I hold myself from laughing as well. I have always been afraid of people’s words since I was 5. That was the first time everyone in my elementary school made fun of me. They ruined my life throughout elementary school till high school. They call me names and now I can’t do anything without the fear of being judged or talked about. I also joined a cult a few years ago (I left it after a year) that the govt. was bad and it was going get me. That made me paranoid of public places even more. I also ever since I was young believed for some reason I am special. From thinking I was secretly mermaid to believing I was a witch and I knew witchcraft to thinking im the freaking avatar and I can bend 4 elements (still think that one cause i just feel as if i have that power). So basically what I’m trying to state is that I have issues but I have no idea if they fit the Schizophrenia criteria. My parents don’t believe in mental help at all, basically if I told them any of this, they would yell at me to be normal. And they have before. So do you think the criteria fits and if it similarly does…should i just try to get help on my own? i am almost 18 and i might get a job before college and im living on campus anyway. What do you think i should do? I feel like it’s getting worse and that in college i feel like one day i will go crazy during class and explode. Plus will my parents know if i go for help or no? I don’t want them to. Thankyou.