Letter to the Editor: The half-alive concept of schizophrenia is still better than the spectrum of everything

Bora, Emre

doi:10.1017/s0033291717002446

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…33 Soon there were many voices rebutting this idea: some claimed that the concept of schizophrenia is still alive 34 ; some argued that, although clearly not well and with limited validity, the concept of schizophrenia has a continued utility 35 ; and others almost shouted that the half-alive concept of schizophrenia is still better than the spectrum of everything. 36 After reading this insightful discussion, we had to agree that schizophrenia is part of a spectrum, but it does not represent the extreme of a normally distributed trait, 37 and shall be kept as a useful concept, 38 for researchers, clinicians, patients, families and society. Indeed, we do not believe in a psychotic spectrum of everything but instead in a meta-spectrum composed by three different spectra: the schizophrenias spectrum, the schizoaffective disorders spectrum and the bipolar disorders spectrum.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Schizophrenia–schizoaffective–bipolar spectra: an epistemological perspective

Marques

Ouakinin

2019

CNS Spectr.

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For decades clinicians and researchers have been thinking and writing about the spectrum of schizophrenia disorders. Indeed both Kraepelin and Bleuler believed in schizophrenia as a spectrum, both in a clinical (individual) and hereditary (family) continuum, from just some exquisite personality traits to unquestionable chronic and debilitating psychosis. Other authors would put the schizophrenia spectrum disorders on different levels of continuum: developmental, psychofunctional, existential, and genetic. Here, we would like to present an historical chronology for the schizophrenia–schizoaffective–bipolar spectra plus a tridimensional model for these spectra: the first axis for categories (affective versus nonaffective psychoses), the second axis for dimensions (personality versus full blown psychosis), and a third axis for biomarkers (remission versus relapse). We believe that without the schizophrenia–schizoaffective–bipolar spectra concept in our minds all our efforts will keep failing one the hardest quest: searching for biomarkers in schizophrenia and related disorders.

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