Review

It helps to understand

Schizophrenia: a very short introduction
Christopher Frith and Eve Johnstone
Oxford University Press, 2003. £6.99

I offered to review this book to increase my understanding and to confirm my experiences as a concerned bystander observing the devastating consequences a diagnosis of schizophrenia can have for the person involved and their family.

I hadn’t come across the ‘Very short introduction’ series, but if this book is typical the series provides an easy and useful route into what for the non-expert are complex subject areas. The authors pack a lot of information into 180 pages. I found the historical accounts of those who now would probably receive a diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia’ particularly moving.

The authors chart the development of psychiatry as a speciality in the 19th and 20th centuries, changing theories of ‘madness’, and treatment regimens from asylums and institutional care to care in the community and the latest research on the biological basis of the disorder.

They do not shirk from drawing attention to the pressures a diagnosis of schizophrenia brings, in a climate where the media portray people diagnosed as mentally ill as perpetrators, rather than victims, of violent crime, and a political climate that fuels fears of people who are different.

The book is a route into unravelling some of the mysteries surrounding a disorder reported to affect one in 100 people (although I suspect the ratio in people aged 18 to 25 is higher), and what is known about its aetiology and natural history. It points to the potential conflicts between the needs of society and the needs of the individual and reveals, despite recent priority given to diagnosing and treating schizophrenia, how little is actually known.

This introduction does exactly what you would hope such a book would do: it inclines the non-expert to want to ‘read on’ and explore the subject further, by stimulating questions such as ‘what are the appropriate ways of helping those affected by schizophrenia?’