Most people with schizophrenia are neither violent nor homicidal

If you have read my work for a variety of mental health magazines and my other blogs you will know by now that I have a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.  I'm not a "paranoid schizophrenic" -- this is a stigmatising and prejudiced tabloid term as used often by reporter Chloe Griffiths in the Liverpool Echo, who this week covered the story, also carried by Mental Healthy, that 24 year old Kyle Moores attacked fellow patient Robert Searle in Ashworth Special Hospital on Merseyside. Because Ashworth is on Merseyside, there are frequent stories about it in that local paper.

It has taken me more than 5 years of campaigning, blogging and complaining to the BBC to prevent them reporting  this kind of incident, which happens only 1.3 times per year in a hospital setting in any given year, according to the latest Mental Health Today Handbook.   The BBC didn't report this story anywhere, not even on North West Tonight on TV or on its website.  I have won my battle with the BBC -- for now at least.

So I was very concerned to see that my colleague Catherine Walker has not only reported the story on a website friendly towards people with my diagnosis -- and we make up 1% of the population, the same who have diabetes -- but used the term "paranoid schizophrenic".  At the end of this post, I will link to the blog entry I wrote last time the BBC won the battle over the Liverpool Echo, and give links to guidelines on how to report stories about people with mental health conditions who -- only extremely rarely -- in fact fewer than once per million people in the UK population per year -- are homicidally violent or aggressive towards anyone else.  And indeed people with schizophrenia account for just 5 stranger-killings a year in Britain too.

Throughout my time as an inpatient on psychiatric wards in North West England I have never once witnessed, or been subjected to, violence, aggression, intimidation, threats or harm of any kind.  OK so I've attempted suicide in hospital -- and indeed around 40% of peope with schizophrenia will attempt suicide during their lifetimes, and 10% will succeed.   Every death or attempted killing at the hands of someone else is a tragedy and it is understandable that the tabloid press want to cover the stories about these.  I was once a hard news journalist working for the BBC and Sky -- although I have never reported anything negative about anyone with schizophrenia.  But I have endless and unlimited sympathy for the families and friends of victims, and would never want to diminish in any way the horror of such events. But suicide is the more common tragedy and the main result of stories about schizophrenia in the mass media is to frighten the public and stigmatise people with the illness.

Tabloids, and in the past, the BBC, point(ed) a very unbalanced and stigmatising view of people with schizophrenia and it's only through the UK's Time to Change campaign and others like it around the world that the public, via the media, are beginning to understand how common this diagnosis is and how gentle and harmless most people with it are.

For the facts on schizophrenia please visit schizophrenia and read my blog post BBC NWT 1-0 Liverpool Echo .  I hope I've helped bust some of the myths surrounding severe mental illnesses and violence/homicide in this blog and if you're a journalist please read Irish charity Shine's guide to reporting schizophrenia: www.shineonline.ie/index.php/component/docman/doc_download/48-guidejournalists?ItemId=77.   It's an essential read ... copies on their way to Chloe and Catherine!

Finally, if you have been affected by the issues in this blog post and need emotional support please contact either our partners SANEline (6pm-11pm) on 0845 767 8000 or Samaritans (24 hours a day) on 08457 90 90 90.  Together we can and will fight and beat stigma.  Please be as open as I am about your diagnoses as it's only once people open up and demonstrate how safe they are to friends, colleagues and the media, that stigma will finally be defeated.