How Will the Mild Encephalitis Hypothesis of Schizophrenia Influence Stigmatization?

People diagnosed with mental disorders, particularly those with schizophrenia, are severely stigmatized (1, 2). The image of people with mental disorders is strongly influenced by the mass media, which are then influenced by the prevailing medical opinion as well as by current research results. Therefore, researchers in psychiatry bear a certain responsibility for the stigmatization of their very own research objects. Within the recent years, the mild encephalitis hypothesis receives more and more scientific interest. According to this hypothesis, a mild, but chronic, encephalitis underlies the symptoms of schizophrenia in a subgroup of patients. Infections, traumas, or autoimmune diseases can cause a mild encephalitis, which leads to psychiatric and/or neurological symptoms (3–5). Since the mass media have recently started to report about the association of brain inflammation and schizophrenia, the mild encephalitis hypothesis is starting to influence the public’s opinion about people diagnosed with schizophrenia, and thus will have a certain influence on the stigmatization. Whether it will increase or decrease stigmatization has not yet been investigated empirically. In the following, we discuss this question on grounds of theoretical concepts and empirical research on stigmatization of schizophrenia.