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Marius Romme and Mervyn Morris outline their suggestions for a more helpful and cause-related alternative to the harmful concept of schizophrenia.
Abstract
This article explains why the term 'schizophrenia' is not just stigmatising, but also fundamentally flawed. We will show that it is a label without scientific validity, applied without reference to an individual's life experiences. Furthermore, its diagnosis ignores connections between these life experiences and core illness experiences. We urge mental health nurses and other professional to listen to what their patients are telling them and help them understand their experiences.
Key words
Schizophrenia, hearing voices, mental health, diagnosis, CASL
Introduction
On 11 October 2006 an initiative called CASL, the 'Campaign for the Abolition of the Schizophrenia Label' was launched by Paul Hammersley and others from the University of Manchester, The problems of labelling and stigma are already familiar to nurses, but it is the concept of schizophrenia itself as an illness entity that is rightly attacked in the campaign. This campaign is one that mental health nurses should support, because, as we will explain, the concept of schizophrenia is a problem that impacts on us all.
Schizophrenia is harmful because it conceptualises experiences in a way that makes it impossible to resolve the problems that lie at the roots of a person becoming ill. In order to explain this and establish a more helpful cause-related alternative, we will discuss the following issues:
1. The scientific validity of the concept is nil, and it does not refer to a brain disease.
2. The diagnostic process neglects the reasons for the experiences.
3. The relationships between the core illness experiences and life experiences are neglected.
4. The inter-relationships between the core experiences are neglected.
5. The core experiences do not represent expressions of psychopathology.
6. Learning to cope with the experiences and with the problems at the heart of the problem are neglected.
7. People who recover from being ill can achieve that outside of psychiatry.
Scientific validity
For many years, authors have criticised the concept of the illness we call schizophrenia, because it lacks both construct and content validity. In other words, putting together the experiences professionals call 'symptoms' to form the disease construct 'schizophrenia' is erroneous. And this being the case,...