There are different stages of the disease and different phases.  People present differently at different times.  So yes, you can have people with schizophrenia present differently at different times and different people who express the illness differently.  There is a lot of crossover with Schizophrenia and a few other diagnoses. This invites misdiagnosis and without good training/experience misdiagnosis happens. Mk Ultra is real but less frequent in comparison to Schizophrenia.  To think that it is not a real disease does those who suffer from it a great dis-service.    I share your concerns about the field.  It is on the brink of breaking and deeply limited compared to the task at hand.  I remember in college having to read all the research journals.  It was fascinating at first and instilled hope until you found that they were doing the same research over and over and over.  I suspect if I picked up research journals now 35 years later, they might be till replicating some of the same studies.  I imagine that is an exaggeration but you get my point.  I really suspect that we will soon have a treatment for Schizophrenia and that it will be a simple deficiency of some minerals with some complicating factor that prevents remedy by simply taking some minerals. Perhaps they can only be replenished intravenously.