There had been a long way to go before we felt comfortable about even discussing the issues revolving around the concept of ‘schizophrenia’, let alone reckoning on mere semantic revision. In this editorial, we aim to extend our discussion on the reasons behind the slow death of the concept of ‘schizophrenia’ and the benefits of changing the name and embracing a spectrum approach with an umbrella psychosis spectrum disorder (PSD) category (similar to autism spectrum disorder) that goes further than a mere semantic revision. We attempted to cover the topic of the renaming by providing five most pertinent points categorised under five domains: reasons, signals, challenges, promises and steps for the change. Admittedly, even a modest revision, such as classifying all psychotic disorder categories under an umbrella category of PSD, and abolishing the term schizophrenia requires careful deliberation and some effort in the beginning, but the revision is well worth the effort considering the benefits in the long run. Renaming a particular form of mental suffering should be accompanied by a broader debate of the entire diagnosis-evidence-based-practice (EBP)-symptom-reduction model as the normative factor driving the content and organisation of mental health services that may be detached from patients’ needs and reality, overlooks the trans-syndromal structure of mental difficulties, appraises the significance of the technical features over the relational and ritual components of care, and underestimates the lack of EBP group-to-individual generalisability. Individuals may make great strides in attaining well-being by accommodating to living with mental vulnerabilities through building resilience in the social and existential domains. Changing the name and the concept of ‘schizophrenia’, which goes beyond a mere semantic revision, may become the first step that allows catalysation of the process of modernising psychiatric science and services worldwide.

The revision effort leading to the publication of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was flawed in process, goals and outcome. The revision process suffered from lack of an adequate public record of the rationale for changes, thus shortchanging future scholarship. The goals, such as dimensionalising diagnosis, incorporating biomarkers and separating impairment from diagnosis, were ill-considered and mostly abandoned. However, DSM-5's greatest problem, and the target of the most vigorous and sustained criticism, was its failure to take seriously the false positives problem. By expanding diagnosis beyond plausible boundaries in ways inconsistent with DSM-5's own definition of disorder, DSM-5 threatened the validity of psychiatric research, including especially psychiatric epidemiology. I present four examples: increasing the symptom options while decreasing the diagnostic threshold for substance use disorder, elimination of the bereavement exclusion from major depression, allowing verbal arguments as evidence of intermittent explosive disorder and expanding attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to adults before addressing its manifest false positives problems.