Schizophrenia Jokes (Also It's Not Multiple Personality Disorder)

Let me preface this post with this warning: My life sucks nowadays. I wake up in the morning thinking "oh God not another new day". I go to sleep thinking "Yay, six whole hours of no one screwing with me". But I put on a happy face for my patients and a snarky face for my Twitter followers. Which leaves this blog as pretty much the only place I can really be myself. And today's one of those days when the whole weight of how much my life sucks is really pounding me in the face. 

So the last thing I need today is to see ONE smartass comment that totally pushes me over. To put it in context, here's the joke on my post I Haz A New Banner (Part Two) (in the italics under the photo):

Yes, I made a schizophrenia joke. Yes, it's a bad one. And YES, I FREAKING KNOW THAT SCHIZOPHRENIA IS NOT THE SAME AS MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER, OKAY? But it's a longstanding common misperception that it is, and in everyday humour, the two are taken to be the same. THIS IS NOT JUST ME; check out these jokes:

I'm schizophrenic and so am I.

National Schizophrenic's Convention: Anybody who's everybody will be there!

If a schizophrenic threatens suicide, is it declared a hostage situation?

I may be schizophrenic but at least I have each other.

Paranoid schizophrenic: Are you staring at us?

(all from Joke Buddha: Schizophrenic Jokes)

Hell, one blogger even started a collection of schizophrenic jokes. Here's a sample:

I've half a mind to go to that meeting on schizophrenia tonight.
 
Did you hear about the panto that was held in aid of the Schizophrenia Association? It descended into chaos when someone shouted "He's behind you!"

When is a man two men? When he is beside himself.
 
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'm schizophrenic, and so am I.

So schizophrenia has always been portrayed as multiple personality disorder in the mass media, even though every medical student in diapers knows that's not the case. And I certainly am not above cracking the same jokes to make people smile.

Then this high-and-mighty Lord Psychiatrist dude comes and puts this comment on my above post:

Psychiatrist said...

As a supposed Cambridge Medical Graduate you should know better than thinking schizophrenia refers to split personalities that talk to one another.

Schizophrenia translates as "splintered mind" which unfortunately has meant that the whole world believes that it refers to people with multiple personalities. A more accurate interpretation of the nomenclature would be that individuals are splintered from reality, with manifestations of psychosis, delusional thought, neologisms, thought withdrawal/insertion/broadcasting and passivity. They do often get auditory hallucinations, sometimes even coming from a part of their body, but schizophrenics never believe that those voices are another personality within them.

Oh man. Oh MAN.

I realise I may have overreacted, but like I said, I'm having a very bad day. Just like everybody else. So this was my reply:

The Angry Medic 

Psychiatrist: Bitch please. I have a MA from Cambridge in Experimental Psychology. My Psych supervisor was Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, BAFTA-nominated father of modern autism and cousin to actor Sacha Baron-Cohen, and he described my dissertation on 'The Magnocellular Theory of Autism and Dyslexia' as "excellent". I could reel off the Schneiderian first-rank symptoms like a well-oiled engine after my first week of psych. So YES, I THINK I KNOW WHAT SCHIZOPHRENIA FREAKING IS.

However, as a supposed psychiatrist YOU should know that it is a common misconception that schizophrenia and MPD are the same thing, and jokes to that effect are so common they have become part of popular culture. So if you want to correct me, go shove your judgment up the arse of every single clown out there who has ever made the joke. Start by Googling 'schizophrenia jokes'. The first page itself will give YOU voices in your head.

If you need more proof, here is me correcting Adam Kay of physician musical duo Amateur Transplants on the same mistake over two weeks ago. I regret it now. He must have had the same resignation in his head at being shot down by a fellow physician WHO FREAKING WELL KNOWS that he suffered just as much as I did to pass his finals and he's making the joke for comedy value AND NOTHING ELSE. 

I hate, HATE it when people play the Cambridge card on me. Do you know what most doctors' reactions are when they find out I'm from Cambridge? Do you think they are filled with admiration and fall at my feet? No. Most of them immediately hate me, or think I'm an arrogant twat who thinks I'm God's gift to medicine and descended to Earth in a beam of light from Heaven with a Russian church choir singing freaking Carmina Burana in the background.  

Every time I make a mistake it's Cambridge this, Cambridge that.

"What do you mean, you couldn't take blood from her? Didn't they teach you that at Cambridge?"

"You've never done this procedure before? But I thought you went to Cambridge?"

"You can't handle this surgery by yourself? Are you sure you went to Cambridge?"

So if you think I walk around all day with a massive neon sign above my head saying "LOL I WENT TO CAMBRIDGE LOL" expecting people to fall at my feet and nurses to rip off their clothing at the very sight of me, think again. I never, EVER tell anyone I work with. I just say I went to Imperial College London and leave it at that.

What do you think? Was I too harsh, or am I justified? I've had a bad day.