Madam, - I find it very unacceptable to read glaring headlines of people being labelled "as an illness" rather than "with an illness", as in your report of a court concerning a young man who stabbed his psychiatrist (July 23rd).
The young man in question, found not guilty, is not, as your headline states, a "paranoid schizophrenic" but a human being suffering with paranoid schizophrenia.There is a huge difference.
People are more than their illness, they are not the illness.
With physical illness we don't say "a migrainic" or a "cancerian" or "cerebal palsic", but when it comes to alcohol, depression and schizophrenia, we suddenly have titles like depressives, alcoholics etc.
Let us be more sensitive to the people with those illnesses please. - Yours, etc,
MARIAN NEARY BURKE, Swords.