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In Reply to: Re: Berg and bi-polar disorder posted by Sara S. on March 15, 2003 at 10:28:05:
Excerpts from my earlier post titled "Great Post! Some myths about & misuse of 'schizophrenia'", now at the bottom of genx archive # 006.
The American Psychiatric Association's (APA's) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Second Edition), also known as DSM-II, published in 1968, defined schizophrenia as "characteristic disturbances of thinking, mood, or behavior" (p. 33). A difficulty with such a definition is it is so broad just about anything people dislike or consider abnormal, i.e., any so-called mental illness, can fit within it.
Mental Disorders for many years specifically excluded organically caused conditions from the definition of schizophrenia. Not until the publication of DSM-IV in 1994 was the exclusion for biologically caused conditions removed from the definition of schizophrenia - the disease is now more widely understood to have organic causes.
Schizophrenia includes several widely divergent personality types:
hebephrenic schizophrenics,
paranoid schizophrenics,
catatonic schizophrenics,
simple schizophrenics(!)
Manic-depressives or sufferers of BMD (Bipolar Mood Disorder) may also be called schizophrenic: "Many cases that are diagnosed as schizophrenia in the United States would be diagnosed as manic-depressive illness in England or Western Europe" (Houghton Mifflin, 1980, p. 165.)
Some Christians may have trouble with the definitions of schizophrenia, as Jesus and the prophets of the bible could be diagnosed as hallucinating paranoid schizophrenics, and the demon-possessed characters of Jesus' time could be diagnosed as sufferers of MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder).
