Welcome to Rant-O-Rama, an occasional blog about stuff that really ticks me off in the mental health world. Please feel free to share your own rants. Believe me, it feels really good.

I was watching the nightly news on Saturday and, once again, I heard some talking head use the phrase “schizophrenic” to describe a situation as though it had multiple personalities. First, I do not like the colloquial use of a horrible disease as a metaphor. Second, I do not like the colloquial use of a horrible disease as a metaphor when it totally misrepresents the horrible disease!

Schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personality disorder) ARE NOT THE SAME! DID is a condition in which at least two distinct identities routinely take over a person’s behavior and interact with the environment in their own distinct way. (I wont’ even touch the debate as to whether DID should be a valid medical diagnosis.) When you think DID, think Sybil, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, or the movies Fight Club or Bourne Identity or the series Captain Underpants.

Schizophrenia, on the other hand, IS a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by psychosis, in which sufferers ( and I do mean SUFFER) experience hallucinations or delusional beliefs. Although schizophrenia literally means “split mind” it is not DID. This is the illness that afflicted the Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash. 

This may sound petty. But to me it represents the ignorance that surrounds mental illness. I do not believe – nor do I want to believe – that people would do this deliberately. I do know that when I point this out to people who misuse “schizophrenic” that they don’t seem too upset about it. Maybe that is why it grinds me to much.

What do you think?

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From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (March 16, 2009)

    Last reviewed: 16 Mar 2009