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The purpose of this survey was to describe the impact of the diagnosis of schizophrenia on the lives of people who receive the diagnosis.

The authors designed a questionnaire to investigate attitudes to and experiences of the diagnosis of schizophrenia. After a pilot study, they made the questionnaire available online and, through a network of service user and other organisations, solicited responses.

Of the 470 responses, 27.4 per cent were from service users. Content analysis of their responses revealed three main categories: concern with the consequences of the diagnosis and its negative impact on their lives, the life contexts of individuals before receiving the diagnosis, and concerns with medication and treatment. This paper deals with the first two.

It is impossible to generalise the results of this survey because respondents self‐selected, and thus might be expected to have strong feelings against (or for) the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

The diagnosis of schizophrenia in this sample had devastating negative implications. It was experienced as harmful and stigmatising. Very few people understood their experiences as a biomedical disorder.

A gulf exists between the experiences of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and the concerns of academics and others currently involved in debates about the merits of different systems of diagnosis.

This survey is valuable because it draws attention to experiences of diagnosis that are easily lost in the storm of academic controversies about diagnosis in psychiatry.

It has been acknowledged that the disparities and inequalities for black and minority ethnic (BME) communities in mental health in the United Kingdom (UK) has reached such proportions that it is considered a public health issue. This paper reviews training as one of the strategies that have been employed to address these inequalities and draws on a historical review and a scoping exercise in England which mapped approaches to race equality training in mental health services. The historical review showed that the concept of race and racism has been replaced by culturalism as an explanation for all racial inequalities and is the central framework for race equality training. Whilst the survey showed that the majority of mental health services were providing training for their staff, there is much fragmentation and a lack of robust evaluation demonstrating effectiveness. While education and training have a key role to play in developing knowledge and skills to address racial inequality, current approaches are fundamentally flawed.