Cognitive deficits, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, why this might not be true and concepts of mental illness

I think there's a constant. The constant is the internal experience of
delusions or hearing voices or unusual perceptions or any of the other
words used to describe what's pathologised by schizophrenia spectrum
disorders.

REsearch shows these disorders are often associated with cognitive
deficits (though people who are paranoid tend to have higher IQs).I
remember reading the paper and being somewhat mortified but I kept thinking.

The research only looks at people who've acquired a diagnosis. Really
that means people who've been hospitalised or who've come for help.
There's people who don't and people who function even though they might
get a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Wealth may also be another protective
factor which means some people avoid diagnosis.

I wonder if there's an element where intelligence can also be a
protective factor. I wonder if some people work out how to cope or have
an internal resistance. Some might say they have schizotypy (a
non-pathological part of the schizophrenia spectrum) because they lack
of occupational and social dysfunction that is also necessary for a
clinical diagnosis however I'm not sure it's as simple as that. It
really depends on what you think a mental illness is.

If it's a brain illness, and to be called an illness it has to have some
physical cause, so people who have the capability to overcome the
problems associated with alternative experiences of consciousness are
still mentally ill but have high functioning. If it's a mental health
;problem rather than a mental illness then there is no concept of
resilience or coping with the brain disorder that's relevant
conceptually, i.e. a high functioning person with he same internal
experience that gets someone else a diagnosis of schizophrenia would be
considered to have schizotypy.

In thinking about this point though the cognitive deficits associated
with the diagnosis of schizophrenia may only be an observation relevant
to people who find coping difficult rather than those who have the brain
disorder.

This sort of comes from me reading about the corpus callosum but this
might not make sense. What I'm thinking is that people can be born with
deficits but they can lead relatively normal lives. The brain and the
individual may be able to adapt to their 'deficiencies' but those that
don't adapt get observed as mentally ill. There's still those who are
undiagnosed and my hypothesis is those who survive schizophrenia-type
experiences without hospitalisation may have a higher average
intelligence than those who end up with a diagnosis.

It's also important to note this group of copers because they have
survival techniques and strategies. Prof Marius Romme was the first
p[psychiatrist to strike upon this idea: people who cope with voice
hearing might have techniques they developed themselves that could help
others who aren't coping so well. This could apply to many mental illnesses.

There is little effort made by UK psychiatrists to check for the
supposed brain illness. There's even less attempt to screen the
population. I guess there aren't enough high precision MRI scanners and
those that are available are used to check for real physical illnesses.