Choosing words carefully to describe MH experiences help people stay well
Is talking about being misdiagnosed with schizophrenia like trying to sew sequins on the Emperor’s new clothes?
As regular readers of my blog might know, in my teens I was diagnosed and treated for ‘chronic schizophrenia’ on the basis of so-called negative symptoms, such as social withdrawal, flattened emotions and lack of interest in things. The situational reasons for these were not taken into account during five years of treatment; neither life events nor the greatly worsening of these so-called ‘symptoms’ by medication. I’ve been fine since I managed to get myself off the neuroleptic drugs and out of the psychiatric system many years ago.
Nowadays people (including my publishers, psychiatrists and others who have read my memoir and those who know me) say that I was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. Although I sometimes say this, too, I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the way it seems to imply that there is…
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