Corporate speak and the psychiatric profession.

Every profession has its own nomenclature. Initiation into the profession involves learning this language. Medicine also has it language, mostly Latin or Greek words that can transform ordinary matters such as a sore muscle into a myalgia and many sore muscles into polymyalgia. We continue to use these words when describing clinical matters. But in other domains there has been an increased use of words from the world of business. Phrases such as the ‘‘the bottom line,’’ have become ubiquitous. Along with these phrases, of course, come a series of practices adapted from modern corporate culture. We have ‘‘retreats’’ to do ‘‘strategic planning’’ to perfect our ‘‘vision and mission statements,’’ define ‘‘goals,’’ and delineate our ‘‘objectives and work plans.’’ We perform ‘‘continuous quality improvement.’’ With this language comes a change in how we describe and perceive our roles. We are ‘‘providers’’ of health care and the people who traditionally were known as ‘‘patients’’ are our ‘‘customers’’ or ‘‘consumers.’’ It might be argued, that aside from injury to the profession’s amour propre, these changes may be salutary; they mirror the changes that have taken place in our profession. The ‘‘old boys club’’ has been dismantled and its priestly language has been superseded by a new way of communicating, one better suited to our current free-market, non-hierarchal, consumer responsive Society. Questioning these new values and their accompanying manner of speech puts one at risk of being labeled a curmudgeon. However, since I’m a confirmed curmudgeon I’ll do just that. It is not hard to understand why these terms and their associated practices might have once seemed efficacious: during the heydays of the technology boom every bright-eyed entrepreneur who staked a claim to the electronic highway was becoming a millionaire and WorldCom, Enron and Tyco where generating tens of billions in non-existent profits. ‘‘Nothing succeeds like success.’’ But we’ve seen the bubble burst. There has been enough experience with these concepts to provide ample evidence that they don’t necessarily deliver. In the past, a favorite example offered by the corporate speak gurus was that of NASA. As the story goes, when everybody working at the Agency from the Director to the janitor could recite their mission ‘‘Putting man safely into space,’’ the impossible became possible and men walked on the moon. However, since the Moon mission there have been a few set backs. Everybody at NASA could still recite the mantra ‘‘Putting man safely into space’’ when the O rings failed giving us the Challenger disaster. No doubt, it is unfair to blame the Challenger disaster on NASA’s Mission Statement. But by the same token why credit it with the successes of the Apollo mission? Perhaps a mission statement, even one known by all employees, is no different than other slogans. With repetition they lose their impact and when not put into practice, even their meaning. So a new Mission Statement must be crafted, and the ongoing Hawthorne experiment known as corporate management continues. But why pick on ‘‘mission statement’’ when there is so much that gets on my nerves: how about words such as ‘‘consumer’’ and ‘‘provider?’’ These terms were D. J. Luchins (&) Department of Psychiatry, University of Chicago, 5841 S. Maryland Ave MC3077, Chicago, IL 60637, USA e-mail: danl@yoda.bsd.uchicago.edu Adm Policy Ment Health & Ment Health Serv Res (2007) 34:421–423 DOI 10.1007/s10488-007-0112-4