The congestive heart failure model of schizophrenia
E. A. Burch Jr and K. T. Burch
Many primary care physicians wish to address the psychiatric aspects of
their medically ill patients but are impatient with the abstract
terminology used in psychiatry's past psychoanalytical period. Modern
psychiatry is a more integrated field and considers the biological and
social as well as the analytical contributors to disease. Using these newer
concepts, we present a teaching model in which schizophrenia is viewed as a
syndrome and is compared with the well-known medical syndrome of congestive
heart failure. This approach facilitates the conceptualization of a complex
psychiatric illness and makes it more appealing to primary care physicians
by demonstrating common gound between medicine and psychiatry.