Implications of a Label
Since my diagnosis in 2016, I have faced endless discrimination and stigmatization based on one word, on one name: schizophrenia. The second I was diagnosed reality set in, and what was expected of me changed drastically. I was, at one point, even discriminated against by my first university. Having been told that I was unsafe and liability on campus. It was as if I were a different person, someone new, someone worse. I was stepping, unquestioningly, into a virgin world, somewhere I had never been, somewhere I didn’t want to be. I went from a young adult, expected to accomplish nothing short of the American Dream, to a schizophrenic, expected to live in a group home for the left of my life, nothing more, perhaps even less. It was a short, brutal transition from neurotypical to disabled. I felt for a while that my life had been cut short.
The problem with this is that I had been experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia for years longer than I had been diagnosed, and never before had anyone gone out of their way to discriminate against me. So, what changed? Why did it take so long for people to become uncomfortable? It’s as simple as a name, a label, a diagnosis. Once “schizo” was applied to me as a label, my world shifted, and so did, apparently, the views and expectations others had of me.
I’ve been told that schizophrenia is worse than cancer, that it is the worst of all illnesses. And while I believe that schizophrenia can be devastating, it is more so the views of schizophrenia that society has that devastate those who have it. Schizophrenia forces people into homelessness, disability, and drug abuse but it is us, as a society, that leaves them that way. Why not, I ask, uplift people? The way to stability has been proven time and time again to be housing, healthcare, and transportation. And yet, no system exists for people with schizophrenia. We expect people with schizophrenia, myself included, to be able to take care of ourselves when we are at our worst, presumably disconnected from reality.
Schizophrenia acts on the nervous system, we know this to be true. So why do we treat it as though its effects are a choice, elective of those who have it? Assuming instead that people with schizophrenia just aren’t doing enough for themselves.
Since my diagnosis in 2016, I have been very lucky. I got in with a good doctor, on medication, and into therapy. But so many thousands of people don’t have those luxuries. And because of the way we view schizophrenia, as a collective, we opt to leave people on the streets. While we are still uncertain of all the mechanisms that influence schizophrenia, there is consensus that it is a neurological disorder. Some even believe it is a neurodevelopmental disorder, signs manifesting early as prodromal symptoms long before the onset. We know schizophrenia can be genetic. We know certain events on a developing fetus can contribute to the later development of schizophrenia. We know that schizophrenia has a direct influence on a person’s lifespan. Those with the illness dying some 28 years earlier than others without. We know that schizophrenia can, among other things, cause movement disorders like catatonia. We can see it on an MRI.
Why then is schizophrenia the only brain illness treated exclusively as a mental illness? Are all mental illnesses brain illnesses? I can’t say for sure but the evidence for schizophrenia being a brain illness is mounting.
It is one of the only diagnoses which directly and seriously influence the way people see and treat you. No illness is more stigmatized. It is one of the only illnesses that make you fear for your life, not because of what you might do to yourself, but because of what others might do to you in a moment of crisis.
How do we change this?
It starts with changing a name and changing classification. We need to distance ourselves from the history of schizophrenia, stepping into a future without it. Changing it instead to psychosis spectrum disorder and classifying it not as a mental illness but as a brain illness. To make progress in treating schizophrenia, we need to change how it’s viewed.
I’m all for reclaiming schizophrenia if nothing is going to change but more so, I support a changing of the way we speak about schizophrenia, the way we classify it. Schizophrenia is a brain illness, people who have can’t always just cope their way out of feeling bad. The treatments that already exist help but are subpar. We should, as a society, want more for people, and that starts with changing our language and our actions. Ableism is often low on the list of things people want to change if they know about it at all. And yet, ableism transcends race, age, gender, and sexuality. It’s time for a change, and I hope in my lifetime I can see it happen.
