The silence around schizophrenia
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Why is schizophrenia called the scariest word in English?
This is an ABC podcast.
What's one of the scariest words you can think of when it comes to mental illness? You with the sand Don't be discouraged though I'm
real lies. It's hard to take away.
This Australian author thinks it's schizophrenia.
I think it's because it's such a mystery. It's so misunderstood. We haven't had any real breakthroughs with schizophrenia for decades. And I think when something is unknown then it becomes really fearful and frightening. And on top of that, of course, there's all the Hollywood imagery that's associated with schizophrenia and psychosis. And that doesn't help. Your true
colors. Two Okay. Author Gabriel Carey, the Australian National University's 2019 HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellow. Hi, it's All in the Mind on RN. I'm Lynn Malcolm. In this World Schizophrenia Awareness Week, I'm speaking with an author and an anthropologist who suggest that the social and cultural aspects of this illness play a strong part in the potential for recovery for people living with schizophrenia. First, Gabrielle Carey defines what schizophrenia means
to her. I come from the personal end. I understand it as not as a a really specific illness. It's a it can be a sort of a related group of illnesses. There's a term now called the collected schizophrenia. So but essentially it's defined by an illness that has psychosis and hallucinations and delusions and voice hearing. But we get so carried away with those symptoms that we forget that there's a human being, an ordinary human being, behind all those symptoms.
doctor Julia Brown is an anthropologist and visiting fellow at the ANU.
Schizophrenia is what has been described by anthropologists as an extraordinary human condition, and it disrupts people's thoughts, feelings, and social abilities. And it's important to realize that no person diagnosed will ever have the same combination of symptoms, but the main categories of symptoms are overwhelming cognitive dysfunction, confusion, which makes data. Today life unmanageable. There are also what are called positive symptoms, which is things that exist on top of shared reality, so that's the delusions and the voices, although I should point out that not everyone hears voices who is diagnosed with schizophrenia. And then there's negative symptoms, and these are perhaps the hardest ones to treat because they're characterized by an apparent flatness of emotion.
And also the experience of mismatched emotions to events that happen.
How do experts define schizophrenia and its core symptoms?
And I think as someone on the other side, in a personal interaction with someone with schizophrenia, the negative symptoms can be the most confronting because it appears like the person in front of you may not care, but that's not true.
Anthropologist Julia Brown and author Gabriel Carey are collaborating on a public lecture on schizophrenia at the ANU in Canberra. It's called The Scariest Word in the English Language. Gabriel Carey has some personal insights into the illness, as one of her family members has lived with schizophrenia.
Julia was just saying probably one of the hardest things to deal with are the negative symptoms. You're dealing with someone who seems to be completely at one end without emotion and completely flat and unresponsive and you know, you might be celebrating some great, you know, twentieth wedding anniversary or your a sibling or a cousin's twenty first and the person appears to have no interest and no engagement and and so you feel like the person doesn't care. So that is really difficult. And then the extreme end, the psychosis is Is also incredibly difficult to deal with, particularly because we have a medical health system that can't manage psychosis at all. So apparently we have the second highest readmission rates in Australia for schizophrenia.
And that's partly because these desperate families turn up at hospitals and emergency departments and are taken in for a few hours or a day or two and then thrown out again. So that's just a bit of my experience.
You're doing some research on this topic and it's based on conversations with people with mental illness and their families.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is schizophrenia called the scariest word in English?
0:02–3:19
2
How do experts define schizophrenia and its core symptoms?
3:19–6:55
3
What social and cultural factors make recovery harder for people with schizophrenia?
6:55–10:10
4
How do families experience and cope with the negative symptoms of schizophrenia?
10:10–14:29
5
What does cross‑cultural research reveal about recovery rates worldwide?
14:29–18:51
6
How does intensive clozapine treatment affect everyday health rituals and agency?
18:51–23:23
7
Why is hope and humanising the illness essential for better outcomes?
23:23–26:43
8
How can listeners get involved in sharing recovery stories and supporting research?
26:43–30:07