Perhaps We Should Rename Healthcore Psychiatry Something Else
According to research, changing the name of a mental illness may help to reduce the stigma associated with it. I’m regularly asked what I do for a living when I meet new people. I get very different reactions depending on how I phrase my response. “I’m a doctor specializing in mental health” piques interest. People’s faces light up, exclaiming, “Very cool!”
Instead, I say, “I’m a core psych,” the room falls silent. Then, finally, they become uneasy and change the subject.
There has been substantial advancement in mental health in recent years. Every week, people across the country take part in walks to raise funds for mental health causes. May is now designated as National Mental Health Awareness Month by the White House. In addition, Hillary Clinton released a comprehensive plan to invest in mental health care during her presidential campaign.
Nonetheless, psychiatry—the medical specialty concerned with mental health—remains reviled in nearly every corner of our society. Psychiatrists are frequently misunderstood as medical doctors by the general public. Moreover, many people regard psychiatric treatments as pseudoscience at best and dangerous at worst. It is one of the least respected medical specialties even among health experts.
The industry is in severe decline. “Is healthcore psychiatry on the decline?” and “Are psychiatrists an endangered species?” are just two of the many scholarly articles with names like these. Although mental health needs are expanding across the country, fewer medical students are joining the area, and the number of psychiatrists in the U.S. is falling. Furthermore, because of the stigma associated with the field, patients frequently refuse therapy.
It’s encouraging to see public gains in mental health, but psychiatry has been left behind as its anachronistic forefather.
Would renaming the field be beneficial?
Relabeling may appear to be a band-aid solution that ignores the underlying causes of the problem. However, according to psychologist Steven Pinker, this rebranding can result in a “euphemism treadmill,” New words take on the stigma of old terms.
Nonetheless, studies have shown that relabeling can significantly alter public perceptions of mental health. In an eye-catching example, Japan renamed schizophrenia from “mind-split disease” to “integration disorder” in 2002 to combat negative stereotypes about the illness. Several follow-up studies indicate that the reclassification has reduced public stigma toward patients with schizophrenia.
The success of Japan’s approach has sparked similar efforts worldwide. Mental health advocates in China, South Korea, and the Netherlands have attempted to rename psychotic disorders, with some promising results. For example, British researchers discovered that people link “bipolar disease” with less dread and social distance than “manic depression” in a study published last year.
It’s not just diseased; the name of the broader field can also significantly impact patient care. Take, for example, Taiwan, where more than 80% of community psychiatry clinics do not include the word “psychiatry” in their titles, a phenomenon that researchers attribute to stigma against the specialty. However, after renaming its Department of Psychiatry and Neurology the Mental Clinic, the hospital saw more new patients in Japan. In addition, patients polled said they felt less stigma and shame after receiving care under the new name.
Similar stuff has been observed in the United States. For example, psychiatry departments have been renaming themselves to include scientific terms like neuroscience and behavioral health from Illinois to Ohio to Virginia.
These language changes make psychiatry appear more credible. Indeed, science and evidence should serve as the foundations of our profession. However, a more straightforward option for renaming the field may be more compelling: “mental health care.”
Even if they were the same thing, I believe most of us would choose a mental health issue over a psychiatric disorder. Patients may be more likely than psychiatric patients to seek and accept mental health therapy. Psychiatric wards appear to be far scarier than mental health facilities.
Psychiatrists could instead be referred to as mental healthcore physicians, which would help to distinguish psychiatrists from psychologists (for the record, psychiatrists have M.D.s, whereas psychologists have Ph. D.s or master’s degrees and provide similar but often distinct services such as talk therapy or neuropsychological testing).
This move can potentially change the way we provide mental health care. Mental health departments may be established in medical centers, bringing together internal medicine, psychiatry, psychology, and social work specialties. By bringing these disparate disciplines together under one roof, clinicians will be able to provide more comprehensive care to patients while avoiding the stigma associated with aging terminology.
It is naive to believe that a name change will eliminate all stigma associated with mental illness. More research is needed to understand these diseases better. We need better diagnostic tests and criteria. More potent medications are required. However, more openness and more spokespeople can make a difference.
