Re: Link between Schizophrenia & OBE's
As it happens, I've known a lot of schizophrenics. Partly, this is because I spent some time in the mental health system (not for schizophrenia, however), and partly, I don't know, I just seem to have known rather a lot of them. I also did a lot of research into various mental illness, because there was a period where I feared I might be schizophrenic, myself (I was not, however).
Essentially, schizophrenia is a disorder of the brain where the person loses the ability to put things in context. Just as possible examples, one's own thoughts may be perceived as voices that are not one's own. Things heard on the radio or seen on television might be later recalled, but without the context of having been broadcasts, and someone might just think that Billy Joel had been in their living room (have seen that happen, actually). Thoughts may wander and the person having the thoughts is unable to separate random, wandering thoughts from physical reality, so they insist that, for example, Billy Joel is their son-in-law (again, have seen that happen).
Essentially, the brain is getting signals all the time, from itself and the material world, and for schizophrenics, there's a breakdown in the system that enables someone to separate their thoughts and other input, and it all gets jumbled up. Brain scans of schizophrenics (especially ones who have gone undiagnosed and unmedicated) show much wider clefts in the brain, so the neuron transmitters have to "jump" farther, and the theory is that they sometimes get scrambled on the way. And, of course, another frustrating thing about schizophrenia is that it can come and go, so some days are relatively lucid and "normal", and others are entirely delusional. It's a distressing condition on all counts. 
(For the record: I didn't come up with the theory about context. I read that in a scientific study some years ago, and it made the most sense of anything I've ever read on the subject, based on my experience of schizophrenics.)
So that's my frame of reference for schizophrenia, and it seems to me that the experience of OBE is probably not especially related. I don't think schizophrenics are any more or less likely to experience OBE than anyone else. It's a fairly universal phenomenon, if not a terribly common one, so there's no reason why you couldn't have both OBE experience and schizophrenia in the same person. I've also never known a schizophrenic to have that kind of delusion. Most of the people I've known with schizophrenia would tell delusional stories (note: I use delusional in the clinical sense, not in the internet perjorative sense) that were woven from things that they experienced in the material world, and occasionally with their own thoughts and ideas interwoven. If they are natural OBE experiencers, there's no reason why they wouldn't include that in their stories.
Just some random thoughts. I don't know if it's of any interest or value, but there it all is. 
May the light surround you, may you be blessed. May the light surround us, may we be blessed. May love and light surround us all, and may we all be healed and blessed. And so it is, and so it shall be, now and ever after.
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