And there are some who think ALL mental illnesses are false.
The problem is that few people are afflicted with the terrible condition “uncountable” (although I guess we’re all “discrete” ;)). “Schizo” is different. There exist schizophrenic people. It is OFFFENSIVE when their condition is used as an inaccurate buzz word. It is HURTFUL when people misunderstand the nature of their condition.
And it’s ignorant.
RTFirefly, Narrad has it right. We’re not talking about mathematical terms here, we are talking about people.
Sure it’s your right to drive around with a bumper sticker making a “schizo” joke. Anyone in this country has a right to appear like an ignorant fuckwit if they so choose.
When it comes to protecting the feelings of schizophrenics, I see two alternatives:
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Educate the 250 million Americans who are using ‘schizophrenic’ incorrectly so that they use it as the professionals do; or
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the professionals could choose a new word.
Since it’s pretty obvious which could be done far more swiftly and easily, I have to blame the pain that schizophrenics feel when the term is misused on the mental health profession.
No, I’m not being facetious. You get the editors of the main journals in the field and the chairs of the most prestigious academic departments together, and they could push this sucker through by this time next year. Or you could take a few eons to change a pretty ingrained cultural use of a word.
Surely you can expect them to be more empathetic to the emotional needs of schizophrenics than the average American. And far more capable of concerted action. Why do you expect the public at large to be the ones to change, rather than the professionals?
You’d have to be CRAZY to fake a mental illness! 
I shit you not, the next person I hear say something like that- part “whatever” and part “whatever” when referring to schizophrenia I am going to say “And part fucking idiot!” I only wish you had said it aloud.
I agree- I can’t stand hearing that misused, and I also loathe the “Forget to take your Prozac today?” and other crap like that. Mental illness is not funny, and if the person you’re making the joke to isn’t suffering from a mental illness, there is an excellent chance that someone close to them is. Keep your ignorance to yourself, IMHO.
Zette
RTFirefly, I don’t expect anyone to change. I’m just saying that anyone who does use it that way is simply an ignorant fuckwit.
Then you have to include the mental health profession in your denunciation. Because they’re the ones who can meaningfully act, and it apparently doesn’t concern them.
So you think it’ll take eons to change the common usage of a word? It is just too hard and not worth the effort?
To which I reply, “Nigger.”
It is NOT better to give a medical condition a new name simply because the wider community misunderstands it. It is BETTER to educate people. It is BETTER to give them an understanding of the term. It is BETTER to give them an understanding of the condition so that the stigma of mental illness can be reduced.
It is NOT better to round up all the schizophrenia sufferers, sit them down and tell them:
“Well you were diagnosed as schizophrenic, you’ve lived your life as a schizophrenic, you’ve suffered for years as a schizophrenic… But hey! Good news! You’re no longer schizophrenic! You’re something else. You see, people didn’t understand what schizophrenia was. So next time you hear someone saying ‘har de har, this CRAZY doughnut is schizophrenic - look, it has two colours, hyuk hyuk’, you may smile smugly, safe in the knowledge that our doughnut-eater it is not a fucking insensitive moron who fails to appreciate the nature of your mental illness. Why? Because you’re not schizophrenic anymore! Woop te do! Happy days are here!”
(Yes, I am being facetious.)
So you blame the pain that schizophrenics feel when the term is misused on the mental health profession? Ri-ight…
Perhaps now is a good time to reveal my the impetous for starting this thread: until Saturday, this week (in Australia) is Schizoprenia Awareness Week. Happy Schizophrenia Awareness Week everyone! So let’s make an effort to understand the nature of this mental illness! Right?
(Or, let’s not bother. Let’s blame the mental health profession for not changing the term “schizophrenia” to something else for people to misunderstand and misuse. :rolleyes: )
Oh, still want to insist that the mental health profession doesn’t “meaningfully act” on community misunderstanding of schizophrenia?
Check out StigmaWatch Australia, a media watchdog estalished to encourage responsible and accurate depiction of mental illness. Observe modern films such as A Beautiful Mind, which portays mental illness sensitively and contrast it with older films that perpuate mental health myths.
You may not be aware of it RTR, but there is a great effort made to increase awareness of mental illness (including the accurate use of the term “schizophrenic”). It is not an effort made to fight ignorance for the sake of it. It is an effort made because promoting an understanding of conditions such as schizoprenia goes a long way to reducing the stigma of suffering from a mental illness
- Narrad
“Fighting ignorance since Wednesday. (It’s taking longer than I thought.)”
I remember that “idiot”, “moron” and “imbecile” were once technical terms used by the mental health professionals of their time to refer to their patients.
(disclaimer: I’m not calling anyone an imbecile, moron or idiot 
)
Their developmentally disabled patients, that is.
What complete nonsense.
RTF, you should be ashamed of yourself. On a board dedicated to fight ignorance, you come down wholeheartedly on the side of promoting ignorance.
Extending your argument, grammarians should say it’s fine to use “it’s” when you mean “its,” and to recognize that “they’re,” “their,” and “there” mean the same thing. Likewise, mathematicians should define pi to be exactly equal to 3.14.
WTF??
If they come to mean the same thing, then that’s what grammarians will do. Just like they’ve given in on “hopefully”, which I guess I didn’t punch hard enough earlier. If you were unaware of that, I’ve done my bit to fight ignorance today.
Why is that?
Oh my Lord, where to start? Lord, give me strength, and a bigger shovel. You want me to explain in detail why that’s a terrible analogy? Actually, I can’t see why I should - you brought it here; it’s your job to explain its relevance. I contend it has none.
And besides, it took us several decades to get the use of ‘nigger’ to the point it’s at now - which is to say that there’s still a lot of places in the USA where there’s zero social stigma attached to calling dark-skinned people ‘nigger’. And that was a fight that got people’s attention in a way that is unfortunately unlikely to be repeatable in the far less socially significant matter of schizophrenics.
It’s not the ‘stigma’ of mental illness that we’re talking about, here. I’m sure that millions of those who misuse ‘schizophrenia’ are without prejudice towards those with mental illnesses.
We’re simply talking about a popular misunderstanding of a venerable term, that is unlikely to go away in any hurry.
Unlike ‘nigger’, which wasn’t anybody’s term of art, and will be regarded as an insult to people of a certain descent and skin hue to my dying day, the label ‘schizophrenic’ only applies to a group of people as long as the mental health profession says it does.
You call their condition by another name, they still have the same condition. But we weren’t talking about that. We were talking about the pain that is caused by the confusion of the name of their condition with the condition of “split personality”.
There’s no label on a person that says, “schizophrenic”. If you rename the condition “glaxotia” (to completely make up a name), sufferers are no better or worse, but if they mention that they’re glaxotic, nobody’s going to tell them they’ve got a split personality anymore. Colloquial references to schizophrenia as split-personality can continue or fade out, and either way, it won’t matter, because there wouldn’t be any schizophrenics; there would only be glaxotics. Just as people can say whatever they want about brontosauruses now, and it doesn’t matter because they don’t exist.
So I go back to where I started: if the confusion of names is a nontrivial problem, the mental health profession can make it vanish. And if it’s a trivial problem, then they can ignore it.
But either way, the confusion between “schizophrenia” and “split personality” has nothing to do with educating the public about mental health in the usual sense. It only has to do with the name, and has nothing to do with popular perception of the condition or its sufferers.
Unlike, say, the confusion between Prozac and ‘happy pills’, which is independent of its name, and education - in the usual sense - is your only way out of it.
I’m all for education, but it helps to know whether education is the appropriate tool. I can teach my kids how to use an iron - or I can buy them perma-pressed clothes.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by RTFirefly *
WTF??
Whaddya mean, WTF? You are arguing on the side of ignorance. Your position is that if ignorance is sufficiently widespread, it should simply be accepted.
quote:
Likewise, mathematicians should define pi to be exactly equal to 3.14.
Because even though it’s wrong, it would be much more convenient that way. That should suit everybody just fine.
RTFirefly, it’s obviously pointless arguing with you about this. If you wish to continue to use the term wrongly, go right ahead. Just be aware you will be thought a fool by people who are aware of the correct use of the word. If that doesn’t bother you, then go for it, dude.
Let’s try an illustration:
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Adam has schizophrenia.
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His coworkers know he has schizophrenia. But they do not understand what schizophrenia is.
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They think Adam has a split personality.
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When Adam is not around, they think it’s funny to refer to ANYTHING with two parts as “schizophrenic”.
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This misconception at (4) and the general misuse of the term at (5) are both hurtful to Adam. His coworkers misunderstand the nature of his mental illness. His community thinks it’s okay to use his illness as a slang term.
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(Critical) Adam asks his boss to correct his coworker’s misunderstanding of his condition. NOT just the word “schizophrenic” as his coworkers misapply it at (5), BUT as they misunderstand his own condition at (4). He wants them to understand that he doesn’t have a dual personality. He wants understanding of his mental illness.
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Adam’s boss says, “But why not just change the name of your condition at (1)?”
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Adams’ mind boggles. The popular misuse of “schizo” at (5) is hurtful, but what is more important is the misunderstanding at (4). Changing the name of his condition at (1) won’t help his coworkers to understand the nature of his illness.
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Adam says to his boss, “How about we just tell all my coworkers that (4) is wrong. And (5) is hurtful.”
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Adam’s boss asks, “Isn’t that too hard?”
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“One step at a time”, Adam replies. “Happy Schizophrenia Awareness Week!”
You’re right in this regard RTF (sorry for misspelling your name in my last post): the label isn’t not paramount. But changing it will NOT help. People will still misunderstand and misuse “schizophrenic” or “glaxotia” or whatever you call it.
This has a little to do with the name. But it has EVERYTHING to do with the popular perception of the condition.
(I hope my admirable restraint in using “coworker” above is noted. :))
BTW, that’s all I have to say about this matter.
Feel free contribute the last word, RTFirefly; I shall of course read what you have to say with interest. But this is the enough for me.
BTW, that’s all I have to say about this matter.
Feel free contribute the last word, RTFirefly; I shall of course read what you have to say with interest. But this is enough for me.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with the use of “schizo” to denote something that is split. Why? Because schizo- is a prefix that means split. There are about 15 other words in my dictionary besides “schizophrenic” that begin with this prefix, and the vast majority of them do refer to things that are, in fact, split. Thus, I see it as a use of a prefix that does not necessarily connote schizophrenia. And this is what I think RTFirefly is getting at: Schizophrenia itself is a misnomer, and should perhaps be changed. Why not? The names of other disorders have been changed to more accurately reflect their true nature. Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong, but from everything I’ve read, it seems schizophrenia does entail some kind of splitting: not a multiple personality, but a sort of dissociative feeling of not being in control of one’s actions. This could be considered a split personality. However, this is not the sense in which many people casually use it, so this is why the name should perhaps be changed, as the term “schizophrenia” means “split mind,” which is rather ambiguous and confusing. I think a change in terminology might in fact lead to greater awareness of what the disease actually is.
Narrad mate, you are an impressive poster in many ways.
- you bring up a worhtwhile subject for discussion
- you stick around in the thread to answer comments made etc
- you publicise schizophrenia week - I didn’t know it was on
- your answer to Firefly’s argument was correct. I was planning to suggest the word “negro” as an example of a word that was not intended to beoffensive, but which became unacceptable.
but most of all - and propelling me to write a fan letter -
- you’re closing the discussion with a dignified offer of final reply. THAT IS SO RARE HERE!!!
When I consider how many times people let arguments go on and on and on, losing their dignity as the point of the fight drifts further and further out of sight. . You’ve said well what you think and you’ll walk away master of the game.
Congratulations, and I certainly agree with what you’ve said. I think that if those of us who are aware of the mistake point it out courteously and firmly it will be almost impossible for people to continue mis-using it.
Thanks
Redboss