Schizophrenia

Three charities have teamed up to tackle what they call “the social justice issue of the 21st century” – mental illness. About time too. Some might sneer at the multimillion-pound Time to Change campaign for using celebrities – such as Stephen Fry, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 37, but in my view anything, up to and including the use of Alastair Campbell in advertising material (“I said to Tony Blair, you do know about my breakdown, don’t you?”), is welcome if it encourages more open discussion of mental ill health.

However, as someone with a parent and sibling who suffer from schizophrenia, the most severe of all psychiatric illnesses, I am concerned about the campaign. In its glitzy efforts to show that mental illness need be no bar to becoming rich and famous, and in its enthusiasm to tackle some of the myths surrounding the subject, it glosses over the harrowing effects of more serious psychiatric conditions and creates a myth of its own – that all mental illness is the same.

At the heart of this problem lies the claim that “mental health problems affect one in four people”, a statistic that encompasses conditions ranging from anxiety to depression and schizophrenia. Each of these conditions can, of course, destroy lives. But what do anxiety or mild depression have in common with schizophrenia? Not much, I would argue…

Read atTimes Online