Sir, - Last night when surfing the net I read a description of "schizophrenia" (in the American National Association for the Mentally Ill page) as a "brain disorder". This description seems to suggest that this is a discrete illness based in a physical or organic fault in the brain of the ill person.
And it seems to portend that the illness has a sort of inevitability about it, where sufferers are concerned.
On the other hand I read a report in The Irish Times (August 26th) that the incidence of mental illness in Irish Emigrants in Great Britain is two and a half times that of the "native population". From this it seems to be deductible that illnesses such as schizophrenia are part of a continuous spectrum and that the onset of the illness can be determined by social and economic and cultural factors.
Obviously there is a need for a more convincing definition of this illness. Whatever about such a definition I would also suggest that the name "schizophrenia" is a horrible and misleading one and I suggest that whatever definition is arrived at should be such as to dispense with this nomenclature forever. - Yours, etc., SEAN CRUDDEN,
Secretary, Irish Mental Patients' Education and Representative Organisation, Dundalk, Co Louth.