Computing Schizophrenia and the Future of the Mac
opdebeeck.org
opdebeeck.org
The metaphorical sense in which it is commonly used, and is being used here, is a confusion with dissociative identity disorder, aka multiple personality disorder. It doesn't help that the word comes from the greek for "split mind," but there is no aspect of multiple divergent identities in schizophrenia, except in the sense that the symptoms will wax and wane over time.
Understand that I say this not out of needless pedantry or tiresome political correctness, but in the interests of society having a full understanding of these incredibly common mental health issues in order that they should be viewed on an equal footing with physical ailments. Perhaps then we could channel our anxieties around psychological health more effectively than we do currently, where we mock the weak in public and chug pills in private.
Rant over...
Such misconceptions and the projection of them are a massive reason why mental illnesses are still stigmatised in modern society. It only stifles recovery of schizophrenic patients and definitely doesn't help.
For example, it'd be totally ridiculous for someone to point at my left arm and say that it's broken when the plaster cast is on my right arm. This is almost the same as when someone points at someone else and says they have X mental illness when their symptoms are actually more like Y mental illness.
This isn't just a problem with schizophrenia, though I'm sure it's the most common misconception. I've seen big misconceptions when people reference Bipolar and depression.
I wonder why this approach had gained credibility, apart from the obvious: More people had started to use tablets. But is that a valid reason to switch everything over to tablet-like ui? Microsoft is doing it, Apple is doing it and Linux (especially Ubuntu) is doing it too.