JRSM > Volume 100, Number 9 > Pp. 423-426

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Schizophrenia, an Illness and a metaphor: analysis of the use of the term ‘schizophrenia’ in the UK national newspapers

Arun K Chopra¹   Gillian A Doody²

¹ Specialist Registrar, Mental Health Unit, Derby City General Hospital, Uttoxeter Road, Derby DE22 3NE
² Clinical Associate Professor in Psychiatry, Nottingham University

Correspondence to: Arun Chopra Email: arun2111{at}hotmail.com

Objective To determine whether schizophrenia is a commonly used ‘illness as metaphor’, to compare the use of schizophrenia and cancer as illnesses as metaphor, and to determine if there is a difference in such usage between the UK and USA.

Design An examination of articles published in the British press.

Setting 600 articles from six British newspapers: the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Mirror, the Sun and the Daily Mail.

Main outcome measures Use of schizophrenia and cancer as metaphors.

Results Schizophrenia was more likely to be metaphorized than cancer (P<0.001) in the UK press, but was less likely to be used as metaphor in the UK press than in the US press (P<0.001). 11% of articles containing the term schizophrenia used the word as a metaphor.

Conclusions Clinicians need to be aware that patients, carers and the public might have a different understanding of the word we use as a diagnosis.

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