"Schizophrenia is a psychiatric construct for a thing that does not exist. It's a box in which to place the difficult. Paranoia has a cause. Voices have a meaning. The psychosis has purpose so is not psychotic.
Schizophrenia is a control mechanism imposed by power structures which exert control and uniformity. Symptoms in a book are not an illness or a part of ourselves to be stigmatised or rejected."
I free wrote those words a couple of days ago in two minutes and spoke them out with performer style and feeling. They were written in response to the question asked at the start of a Mad Studies session at Northumbria University about R. D. Laing.
"What is schizophrenia?"
When I picked up my pen I hadn't expected to write anything quite so radical. It's a view that many people will profoundly disagree with though it has precedents, especially in anti- and critical- psychiatry and in some of the survivors' and hearing voices movements. It would also have found a good degree of sympathy from Laing himself, a man who wasn't known for always sticking to the medical model of mental illness. I will stress that I am in no way dismissing the reality of mental distress or how difficult it can be to live with distressing mental experiences.
I received both applause and shocked gasps. The former was unexpected. The latter wasn't.
The Mad Studies group was a safe environment to say things this controversial and for others to feel safe to express very different answers to the question.
It was a safe environment to discuss concepts of mental distress, experiences of hearing voices, the interpretations of phrases like abnormal beliefs and indeed the entire concept of mental illness, dis-ease or distress.
A safe space for people to know that behind uncomfortable or controversial views there's a great deal of nuanced thought. A statement that schizophrenia is a construct for a thing that doesn't exist isn't just plucked from thin air or from the box marked "Stupid!" That's the case whether I'm saying it or someone on our syllabus in the university.
I'm grateful to be stable enough this year for the course, alongside the more vocational courses I'm doing. It's a new academic discipline but it has the potential to be incredibly brilliant in wisdom, broadness, and influence. Next week we'll be looking at stigma, discrimination, and Sainism.
During the afternoon I remembered an attitude I once had that I'm gobsmacked at, arising from images given to me by others combined with a common misapprehension that schizophrenia is multiple personalities and a societal stigmatisation of both. It's fair to say my knowledge and beliefs have both developed since then.
It was 1992. I was in a day hospital in Sussex talking with one of the other inmates, a very intelligent man who built something I'd loved in BBC science fiction.
I said, "The one thing I can't cope with is schizophrenics. They're so frightening and unpredictable."
Woah! Yes. I said that, or similar words. Mea culpa! It wasn't an uncommon kind of view in 1992 but it was a horrible one.
I'll never forget Peter's response.
He said, "My wife is schizophrenic."
When I picked up my pen I hadn't expected to write anything quite so radical. It's a view that many people will profoundly disagree with though it has precedents, especially in anti- and critical- psychiatry and in some of the survivors' and hearing voices movements. It would also have found a good degree of sympathy from Laing himself, a man who wasn't known for always sticking to the medical model of mental illness. I will stress that I am in no way dismissing the reality of mental distress or how difficult it can be to live with distressing mental experiences.
I received both applause and shocked gasps. The former was unexpected. The latter wasn't.
The Mad Studies group was a safe environment to say things this controversial and for others to feel safe to express very different answers to the question.
It was a safe environment to discuss concepts of mental distress, experiences of hearing voices, the interpretations of phrases like abnormal beliefs and indeed the entire concept of mental illness, dis-ease or distress.
A safe space for people to know that behind uncomfortable or controversial views there's a great deal of nuanced thought. A statement that schizophrenia is a construct for a thing that doesn't exist isn't just plucked from thin air or from the box marked "Stupid!" That's the case whether I'm saying it or someone on our syllabus in the university.
I'm grateful to be stable enough this year for the course, alongside the more vocational courses I'm doing. It's a new academic discipline but it has the potential to be incredibly brilliant in wisdom, broadness, and influence. Next week we'll be looking at stigma, discrimination, and Sainism.
During the afternoon I remembered an attitude I once had that I'm gobsmacked at, arising from images given to me by others combined with a common misapprehension that schizophrenia is multiple personalities and a societal stigmatisation of both. It's fair to say my knowledge and beliefs have both developed since then.
It was 1992. I was in a day hospital in Sussex talking with one of the other inmates, a very intelligent man who built something I'd loved in BBC science fiction.
I said, "The one thing I can't cope with is schizophrenics. They're so frightening and unpredictable."
Woah! Yes. I said that, or similar words. Mea culpa! It wasn't an uncommon kind of view in 1992 but it was a horrible one.
I'll never forget Peter's response.
He said, "My wife is schizophrenic."
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