“The goal goes far beyond the mere semantic choice,” defends Matthieu de Vilmorin, schizophrenic and author of several books on “crazy people.”
He is one of two patients to have signed a column published Tuesday by Le Monde, in which doctors, psychiatrists and associations call for changing the word “schizophrenia” to help change views on this illness.
Often, illnesses are named after the doctor who first clearly documented the symptoms and progress.
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD), under the aegis of the World Health Organization, then adopts terminology or not, to provide a common language for health professionals.
This method of baptism is relatively unused in psychiatry, where a pictorial conception of words is preferred.
Thus the word schizophrenic comes from the Greek
schizo,
which means to split, and
phren,
which refers to the brain.
The term is used in psychiatry to designate severe and persistent psychological disorders whose causes are still poorly understood and whose features can vary from one patient to another.
In addition to the disturbed perception of reality – thoughts, emotions, behaviors – which leads to isolation, delusional ideas or hallucinations, particularly of voices, can be added, which for a tiny portion of patients can lead to a dangerous gesture.
But for the vast majority of people diagnosed, this risk does not exist.
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“The stereotypes and false ideas circulating about schizophrenia are still too often relayed by the media, which associate schizophrenia and split personality or duplicity, schizophrenia and violence/criminality, or schizophrenia and extreme dangerousness,” reproach the signatories of the forum, aware that alteration has become, in common language, a sort of justification for the least understandable crimes.
However, they affirm, the people concerned “are likely to suffer more” from the stigma than from the disorder itself.
In Japan, an effect on diagnosis
In France or elsewhere, the debate is not new: already in 1992, Japanese patients and their families had called on public opinion and public authorities so that the word “schizophrenia” – seishin bunretsu byo (“torn disease of the 'spirit') – finds a successor more suited to this chronic illness.
Ten years later, Japan very officially opted for an expression meaning “integration disorder”.
This change of perspective, and this destigmatization, had a notable effect on the diagnosis, which doubled, going from 36% in 2002 to 70% in 2004, recall the authors of the column.
An estimated 1% of the world population has schizophrenia.
That is 80 million people, 12 more than the number of inhabitants in France.
A 2018 survey showed how much caregivers, in particular pharmacists and general practitioners, were unaware of schizophrenia and were afraid of it.
As for the patients themselves, many of them do not recognize themselves in the diagnosis given on the label.
This is why “French psychiatry must take responsibility for changing its care practices and remove
schizophrenic disorders
from the classifications of psychological disorders,” insist the signatories.
Who insist that we can recover from schizophrenia, when so many people think it is incurable.