Mind your language?

Mental Health Nursing,  Mar 2007  by Ramsay, Mike

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In this edition, Marius Romme considers the continuing use, or otherwise, of the term schizophrenia. While it may be new to challenge this specific term, there is a rich heritage in the mental health field of appraising the varying merits and demerits of professional jargon. Indeed, not too long ago the word 'health' was added to all things 'mental,' arguably to sanitise the latter from its pop culture use as a descriptor for angry. Annie Altschul (1997) had a problem with the demonising of the word mental, when used in isolation, as she correctly asserted its origins conferred it to simply mean 'of the mind.' Are you and I, therefore, mental nurses; mental health nurses; either of the foregoing and to whom does it matter?

Such changes are often accused of resulting from 'political correctness', but may be born out of genuine attempts to better clarify or define issues relative to our work. Madness, for example, is considered by many to be a derogatory or profane term, much more suitably replaced by its medicalised, twentieth century successor, 'mental illness', which in turn, is increasingly threatened as an acceptable label by 'psychological disorder'. Turning full circle, we find mad being used as a source of new found respect and personhood in some quarters of the user movement, with 'mad pride' and 'mad not bad' being upbeat slogans demonstrating this.

Asylum is another term tied up with unfortunate images of the past, seemingly forever burdened with notions of dark, Victorian institutions. This deflects society away from the original human caring concept and meaning - sanctuary. At a conference I attended in Ireland last year, one of the workshops threw another term into focus - seclusion. If we consider being in a secluded area we may think of quietness, tranquillity, or perhaps privacy. Yet the psychiatric measure of seclusion may be viewed as being more about control, custody or isolation - leading to negative associations with punishment, rather than therapy.

Name change for change's sake, or to simply soft-soap unpalatable issues, are negatives in my view. It is, however, equally possible that developing and dynamic discourses within disciplines can result in positive conceptual and terminological evolution.

Reference

Altschul A (1997) The Mental Health Nurse (Ed. Tilley S). Oxford: Blackwell Science.

Mike Ramsay

University of Dundee, Scotland

Copyright Community Psychiatric Nurses Association Mar 2007
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