Sir: In ‘Mental illness and the media’ (Psychiatric Bulletin, 24, 345-346) Jim Bolton is right to point out that psychiatrists should not simply blame the media for stigmatising mental illness, but should learn how to communicate successfully with the media themselves. I would add two points. First, psychiatric patients should also be encouraged to communicate more effectively with the media: the message is more powerful if it comes from them as well rather than just from us. Second, psychiatrists themselves are in part to blame for the stigma of mental illness in their choice of diagnostic terms, for example ‘schizophrenia’, which is widely taken to mean ‘split personality’ and is associated, at least in some people's minds, with unpredictable violence (Reference CrichtonCrichton, 2000).