The term "schizophrenia" should be abolished

[djm]

I was.

Not to be a party-pooper, but jokes about schizophrenia are roughly as funny as jokes about cancer.

What a party-pooper! You want cancer jokes now?

djm

[Lambchop]

I wasn't making a joke, either.

[JessieK]

I agree. It isn't funny.

I have a very close family member (by marriage), someone with whom I have very frequent interaction, who suffers everyday with this disease. She and every member of her immediate family have been enormously affected and shaped by her illness. She fits most of the clinical description, though she can carry on real conversations and care about real things and people, too. It is a complex thing, to be sure, but it's valid and it's real. I think the diagnosis of this disease, though horrible to hear, is important in helping people know what to do. Yes, I'm sure there are causes we don't know about, but once it's there, it's there. And it's intense.

[Jack]

I agree. It isn't funny.

I have a very close family member (by marriage), someone with whom I have very frequent interaction, who suffers everyday with this disease. She and every member of her immediate family have been enormously affected and shaped by her illness. She fits most of the clinical description, though she can carry on real conversations and care about real things and people, too. It is a complex thing, to be sure, but it's valid and it's real. I think the diagnosis of this disease, though horrible to hear, is important in helping people know what to do. Yes, I'm sure there are causes we don't know about, but once it's there, it's there. And it's intense.

*hugs*

[WyoBadger]

It's interesting (no, it's really really sad) how often we find something funny until we experience it for ourselves (or through someone we love).

When I was a teenager, I used to think all those skinny Ethiopian jokes were pretty hillarious...until I went to Haiti the first time.

Tom

[Lambchop]

People make jokes out of tragic things as a way of dealing with something they can't otherwise deal with.

Everybody is affected by horrific things. People just deal with it differently. Some people wail and rend their clothing. Some people withdraw and can't say anything at all. Others feel dreadful about it on the inside and it comes out as satire or a joke--if it didn't, it would be more than they could bear.

What's important is that we don't judge others and their feelings based on their responses to tragedy and stress. You can't see what colors another's soul.

[Denny]

I had a childhood friend whos father was the county coroner, they lived upstaires from the mortuary....

Gallows humor.

[Wombat]

I don't find schizophrenia funny, and yes, I do know what it is like for loved ones to have it. Someone very close to me had it very, very, badly. I'd be surprised and shocked if someone here did think it funny.

I thought the original article very suspicious, well pretty bizarre, for reasons well spelt out by Lambchop, and I thought the suggestion that it needed a name change, a name drop, or something like that, bizarre beyond belief.

Somebody who who finds zany behaviour by cancer doctors funny, which they well might, ought not to be accused of finding cancer funny. Surely strange views about nomenclature and causation are fair game, even if the illness isn't.

I suppose the banter morphed into something a bit less specific but that isn't how it began. For my part, it simply didn't occur to me that someone might think that a joke about weird and dodgy research and terminology would be taken as a joke about the disease. It is because I do take the disease so seriously that I find the idea that we don't need to classify schizophrenia as such so risible.

That said, it is always better on a board like this to err on the safe side.

[Joseph E. Smith]

The disease isn't funny. But dealing with it through joking is only a natural way of avoiding too much pain IMHO.

I don't usually make jokes about human ailments, out of respect for the suffering and their families.

But I still found that T-Shirt funny, especially as it was just another out of place aspect at WDW.

[SteveShaw]

The disease isn't funny. But dealing with it through joking is only a natural way of avoiding too much pain IMHO.

I'm glad someone said this. There's no need to get too heavy about it - just be sensitive and respectful and choose your moment carefully.

[Walden]

Not to be a party-pooper, but jokes about schizophrenia are roughly as funny as jokes about cancer. This analogy holds up reasonably well because a diagnosis of schizophrenia is about as grave as a diagnosis of cancer. Maybe more.

Yeah, but, when written out, it looks like a German word for poopoo.

[Joseph E. Smith]

The disease isn't funny. But dealing with it through joking is only a natural way of avoiding too much pain IMHO.

I'm glad someone said this. There's no need to get too heavy about it - just be sensitive and respectful and choose your moment carefully.

Quite happy to be of service, sir.

[Jack]

I'm glad that people feel called to defend themselves and their positions, because it makes them that much more understandable.

[missy]

when I make "jokes" about something, I really do not mean any disrespect at all. In fact, I will make the most jokes about MYSELF and my circumstances.
I'm one of those types that of people that feel you either laugh or cry. I'd much rather laugh - with someone or at myself - than cry about things. It just makes life more tolerable.

I've always found "gallows" humor to be funny - I guess I'm just weird that way.

And I think Jeff Foxworthy is hilareous - because I've LIVED so much of what he talks about!!!

(and I can't spell worth a crap this morning!)

[Joseph E. Smith]

As a long time sufferer of mental issues (granted, not quite as severe as schizophrenia), I have no problem joking about myself with others. It is one way for me to see beyond my issues and toward a sunnier side of life. Without a sense of humor about my state, I would have been gone a long time ago.

Laughter can be the best of medications sometimes.