This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Stephen S. Nagy, MD
The Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital Philadelphia

JAMA. 1979;242(8):712.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The article by Manyam et al (241:54, 1979) presents insufficient evidence to diagnose schizophrenia, which is not equivalent to the presence of hallucinations, paranoid delusions, and loose associations in an oriented individual. These psychotic features occur in a variety of other illnesses, both organic and functional,¹ and a recent review article² suggests that many functionally psychotic patients who are labeled "schizophrenic" would be more accurately diagnosed according to the present classification system as suffering from manic-depressive illness. Calling any person with these symptoms and signs schizophrenic merely contributes to the unfortunate trend of the term's degenerating into a synonym for psychosis or severe mental disorder.³

There are two sets of diagnostic criteria available for diagnosis of schizophrenia.^4,5 Important but unavailable information about one or the other of these two patients concerns the presence or absence of depressive or manic symptoms, drug abuse, or . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?