Psychiatrists have for many years regarded conditions such as anxiety or depression as being at the extreme end of a normal distribution of the characteristic. In contrast, traditional psychiatric classification considers disorders such as schizophrenia as discrete conditions qualitatively quite distinct from normality.
However, recent surveys have suggested that minor psychotic symptoms are relatively common amongst the general population, and that they are increased by the same factors as increase the risk of schizophrenia. Furthermore, other studies indicate that those diagnosed as psychotic are in many ways rational. This new evidence suggests that a continuum of liability to psychosis exists, and that the mad are saner than is often thought while the normal are not so sane as we commonly assume.
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