Encountering People Labeled "Schizophrenic"

Abstract

Diagnostic labels segregate "normal" from "abnormal," leading to the dehumanization of all people. "Schizophrenia" is one of the most abusive terms applied to people, highlighting the deficits while obscuring the strengths that exist in all human beings. The detachment that diagnosis encourages has sometimes been used to justify destructive forms of treatment. This article examines the value of a poetry workshop as a means of delabeling schizophrenia and enhancing empathic understanding. What makes this annual 7-week experience unique is that it took place within the walls of a state institution and involved about an equal number of college students and hospitalized people, who gradually moved, through the writing and discussion of poems, from a no-man's land of mutual misconception to a high level of group unity and individual respect.