The congestive heart failure model of schizophrenia

Many primary care physicians wish to address the psychiatric aspects of their medically ill patients but are impatient with the abstract terminology used in psychiatry's past psychoanalytical period. Modern psychiatry is a more integrated field and considers the biological and social as well as the analytical contributors to disease. Using these newer concepts, we present a teaching model in which schizophrenia is viewed as a syndrome and is compared with the well-known medical syndrome of congestive heart failure. This approach facilitates the conceptualization of a complex psychiatric illness and makes it more appealing to primary care physicians by demonstrating common gound between medicine and psychiatry.