Schizophrenification

The practice of explaining any non‑normative experience—hearing voices, seeing visions, feeling spiritual presence—as schizophrenia, often without clinical assessment or differential diagnosis. Common in online mental health spaces and in pop‑psychology articles. Schizophrenification ignores that many cultures have non‑pathological categories for such experiences (shamanism, mediumship, prophecy). It medicalizes the mystical, treating ancestral communication as hallucination. Critics argue it is a form of cultural imperialism, imposing Western psychiatric categories on diverse ways of being human.

Schizophrenification Example: “The young woman who heard her deceased grandmother’s advice was schizophrenified by online commenters. In her culture, this was a gift, not an illness.”

Schizophrenification by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal June 5, 2026