Behavior: The Irish Disorder

Author Honor Tracy calls it "double-speak, double-think"—the typically Irish form of banter that says one thing and means another. It has helped produce a race of verbally agile writers, politicians and pub crawlers. If McGill University Psychiatrist H.B.M. Murphy is correct, it is also producing a high rate of schizophrenia on the old sod.

At the second annual Conference on Schizophrenia, in Rochester, Dr. Murphy reported that the incidence of schizophrenia in the Republic of Ireland is nearly triple the rate of the disease among Irish in Canada and Northern Ireland. His...

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