The Label

We are calling for the label of schizophrenia to be abolished as a concept because it is unscientific, stigmatising, and does not address the root causes of serious mental distress.

The Stigma

To be labelled ‘a schizophrenic’ is one of the most devastating things that can happen to anyone. This label implies dangerousness, unpredictability, chronic illness, inability to work or function at any level and a lifelong need for medication that will often be ineffective but will usually cause unpleasant side effects.

The label is also morally wrong. It is imposed on people in the absence of any evidence base and used without their informed consent (informed that is, of the controversies surrounding it).

The label also appears to justify drugs as the major intervention as well as a vast and very unsuccessful research programme searching for biological and genetic causes.

We now know that the mayor complaints of ‘schizophrenia’ are rooted in daily life problems like traumatic experience and identity crisis but these are mystified using the schizophrenia concept.

There is hope.

In 2002 in order to remove the stigma and prejudice associated with the term schizophrenia, The Japanese Society of Psychiatry and neurology renamed the condition as an Integration disorder. It is defined not as a specific illness, but as a syndrome based on a stress vulnerability model, with many different causes, symptoms and outcomes.

Professor Marius Romme in The Netherlands has for a number of years called for a new diagnostic category of post-traumatic psychosis, whilst Colin Ross in the United States has made a similar call for a category of Dissociative Psychosis.

The CASL Campaign

The desire of the CASL campaign therefore is to place the label ‘schizophrenia’ into the diagnostic dustbin in which most certainly belongs - not based solely on the poor science that surrounds it, but also on the immense damage that this label can bring about.

The CASL campaign attempts to build a broader coalition of service users groups and like minded professionals, with the aim of bringing a more coherent and humane diagnostic system to service users worldwide.