Reducing Stigma Associated with Schizophrenia

I examine stigma associated with schizophrenia and how psychiatric diagnosis, mental health professionals, the criminal justice system, and society ostracize and contribute to the suffering of approximately three million Americans. I doubt schizophrenia’s conceptualization as a progressively deteriorating biological disease and present the social conditions that accumulate stress for the individual and lead to psychotic episodes. I argue that schizophrenia cannot be understood as a “thing, but as a complex system of numerous variables contributing to a system of disorder resulting from prejudiced attitudes, discriminatory social-structural conditions, and unjust treatment of human beings needing extra resources to thrive. Ultimately, I present discrimination of people with psychological disorder as a human rights issue, parallel to the neurodiversity movement to normalize autism as existing in the greater variation of human neurodevelopment. People with psychotic symptoms do not need to be cured; they do need acceptance, assistance, and resources to thrive alongside their family, friends, and the greater society. I infer necessary radical structural change to diagnostics, treatment, and the criminal justice system to unravel structural discrimination. I hypothesize reducing stigma by an intermediate practical suggestion of eradicating the label “schizophrenia” from our language as stigmatizing. I draw upon 15 years of promising evidence of moderate reduction in social attitudes following Japan’s renaming of schizophrenia ( mind-split disease ) to integration disorder