Mental illness is cultural in nature, in that we can't really say that schizophrenia in the United States is quite the same thing as schizophrenia in, say, West Africa.

Consider that at one time it was quite common for the mentally ill to consider themselves to be the emperor of france, or at least some manner of royalty.

Now I myself - not at the moment, but not long ago at all - was completely convinced that I was a clandestine operative for the United States Marine Corps Joint Forces Cyber Command.

How I arrived at that conclusion is a little hard to explain, however I have lots of completely rational explanations, for example I really did apply to the USAF Cyber Command when it was announced at Slashdot back in 2008.

There are other little dots here and there. When you see a bunch of dots on a printed page, do you see a picture?

Among the natures of psychosis, is that I see connections that most people don't. You'd connect the dots and you'd see a smiley face or a bumblebee.

I'd connect the dots and I'd see myself as James Bond.

Thank you for elaborating on the topic. I didn't mean to snark on mental illnesses - it just occurred to me that a lot of things that are classically associated with delusions are becoming the part of reality, so it's only going to get harder to determine what is true and what is just imagination.