Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Social construction of schizophrenia


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. Liz Read! Talk! 22:11, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Social construction of schizophrenia

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WP:Essay, I don't know what encyclopaedic content I can get from this. AtlasDuane (talk) 11:32, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Psychology-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 12:19, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
 * DELETE: The article was contributed by a now permanently blocked editor. It is cited to some 50 scientific sources, mostly in full citation templates, but much of the text is context, and hardly any of it addresses the subject of the article, i.e. whether and how "schizophrenia" is socially constructed, or (per a single sentence at the end of the very short section "Movement to reconstruct schizophrenia") whether it ought "to be socially reconstructed". The article correctly says, as is discussed in other articles, that "schizophrenia" is historically constructed by doctors and is now considered doubtful or obsolete as a category: but that is not the subject of this article. To go through the article's chapters one by one:


 * 1 Introduction --- context, does not address the subject
 * 2 Themes --- context (social constructionism in general), does not address the subject
 * 3 Movement to reconstruct schizophrenia --- call to resolve problems of definition, does not address the subject
 * 4 Historical construction of schizophrenia --- background, basically off-topic, does not address the subject
 * 5 Charities committed to changing public perception --- organisations that would like to change the definition, tangential to the subject
 * 6 Science of schizophrenia and comorbid conditions --- discussion of the science, again, off-topic
 * 7 Global moves to change the construction of schizophrenia --- international desire to change the definition.

The article, in short, skirts about what "social construction of schizophrenia" means, barely mentions whether it actually happens or happened, and touches on various people's wishes to change something, possibly such a social construction.

In the hope that the citations actually discuss the topic, and that the problem is merely poor wording in the article, I looked at a sample of the cited sources that seemed to be being used to support claims of social construction. [17], [29], [39], [52] do not mention "social construction" at all. [10] does discuss "social construction", but is only slightly about psychiatric disorder and doesn't (I think, search doesn't work on the scanned text, so it was all by eye) mention schizophrenia at all.

This all looks very much like that vaguest and worst of charges, original research by synthesis. Many of the citations talk about social matters; some discuss construction[ism]; some talk about schizophrenia; I found none that did all of these at once, as would be necessary to establish notability. Perhaps some of them use synonyms for these terms, and do in fact discuss the article's topic: but if so, it was too opaque to be discernible. I think we need to WP:TNT delete this article as unencyclopedic, without prejudice to its being recreated in a form which scientifically educated editors can actually understand: and with any luck, ordinary readers too. The current article is not accessible in that way. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:43, 17 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Seconding WP:TNT as additional rationale. AtlasDuane (talk) 17:47, 18 September 2023 (UTC)


 * DELETE. per TNT and essay. Mason (talk) 23:26, 18 September 2023 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.