October 11, 2006

psychiatrists comment on proposed removal of schizophrenia label

On the eve of World Mental Health Day, a group of leading mental health experts are calling for the scrapping of the term ‘schizophrenia’ as a coverall term for classifying patients with psychosis.

Prof Robin Murray, Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, said:

“Most psychiatrists accept that schizophrenia is an unsatisfactory term. Clinicians and researchers can be trained to make the diagnosis in a reliable fashion. However, it is likely that the term covers people with a range of different causes for their hallucinations and delusions, and certainly people so diagnosed have a range of different outcomes from recovery to deterioration. Furthermore, to the general public the term conveys bizarreness, likely deterioration and possibly violence, and this may lead the person diagnosed as schizophrenic being stigmatised. Furthermore, the problem with discarding this term is that nobody has answered the question of how would we then classify patients with psychosis. If we don’t have some way of distinguishing between patients, then those with bipolar disorder or obsessional disorder would be mixed up with those currently diagnosed as having schizophrenia and might receive treatments wholly inappropriate for them. Most psychiatrists would still agree that the term schizophrenia is a useful if provisional concept. My personal preference would be to replace the unpleasant term schizophrenia with dopamine dysregulation disorder which more accurately reflects what is happening in the brain when someone is psychotic.”

Prof Til Wykes, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Rehabilitation at the Institute Of Psychiatry, said:

“Most psychologists accept that the label has unfortunate consequences for the person especially in terms of discrimination and stigma, a situation exacerbated by some media reporting. However we should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water as despite its limitations, a diagnosis can help people access much needed services. What all of us have to remember is that these are people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia not ‘the schizophrenic’.”