(concurring in part, dissenting in part). Leave to appeal was granted in these cases to resolve one of the most vexatious problems of interpretation presented by the Worker’s Disability Compensation Act of 1969: What are the determinative factors in ruling whether a worker qualifies for benefits statutorily provided for those suffering "total and permanent disability” from "incurable insanity or imbecility” within the context of MCL 418.361(2)(f); MSA 17.237(361)(2)(f).1

*86In each case, the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (WCAB) applied the test set forth in Sprute v Herlihy Mid-Continent Co, 32 Mich App 574; 189 NW2d 89 (1971):

"An employee is incurably insane * * * if the occupationally-related mental or emotional illness which impairs the employee’s mental processes is of totally disabling proportions and is likely to be of long and indefinite duration, thus making gainful employment impossible.” (Footnote omitted.)

Wage-earning capacity was found to be determinative.

The majority today rejects Sprute in part and finds wage-earning capacity not to be determinative. We also would reject the Sprute test and agree that wage-earning capacity should not be determinative of MCL 418.361(2) injuries, at least during the first 800 weeks.2 Nevertheless, it may be considered among other facts relevant to the claimed psychiatric disability.

However, we cannot subscribe to the admittedly imprecise and all-encompassing definitions of "insanity” and "imbecility”.

The majority opinion says:

"We conclude that a worker’s mental illness is 'insan*87ity’ if he suffers severe social dysfunction and that a worker’s intellectual impairment is 'imbecility’ if he suffers severe cognitive dysfunction. Social or cognitive dysfunction is 'severe’ if it affects the quality of the worker’s personal, non-vocational life in significant activity comparably to the loss of two members or sight of both eyes, and is incurable if it is unlikely that normal functioning can be restored.”

This approach disavows the criteria and terminology commonly employed by the medical and legal professions and substitutes an amorphous concept (to be developed in subsequent opinions) which focuses upon non-occupational "quality of life”.

The decision also must be examined in light of the test for determining causal nexus to employment as adopted in today’s Deziel cases.3 The combined result of these cases is that if one imagines/hallucinates ("honestly perceives”) that one’s work is the cause of a "severe social or cognitive dysfunction”, that perception is conclusive even if it is not true. Total and permanent disability is established and a minimum of 800 weeks compensation is. automatic and not reviewable during that time.

From the two decisions of today, we must recognize the flow of an immeasurably broadened and even more uncertain concept of compensable, work-connected injuries.

I

A short summary in pertinent part of each of the three cases follows. All had been paid general disability compensation but subsequently filed *88claims for total and permanent disability under MCL 418.361(2X0; MSA 17.237(361X2X0.

Anna Redfern

Plaintiff was paid general disability compensation for 750 weeks after she suffered a minor injury at work. On January 8, 1968, she claimed total and permanent disability by reason of incurable insanity caused by the incident at work. She says she suffers from anxiety and sometimes she has arm and back pains. She is not delusional, hallucinatory or dangerous. She is well oriented and capable of managing her own affairs. The only psychiatrist to testify said she had a "neurotic depressive reaction with somatic manifestations”.

The WCAB expressed the opinion that she was not insane, not "incurably insane”, nor an imbecile, but felt obliged under the Sprute test to find her so because she was psychologically unfit for employment. The Court of Appeals denied leave to appeal.

Joseph Pastaleniec

Plaintiff was a plumber and worked for the same man for 25 years. When his employer died, plaintiff refused to work again as a plumber because, the psychiatrists agreed, he had looked upon the employer as a surrogate father. His refusal to seek employment again in the plumbing industry was viewed by the psychiatrists as a self-imposed, pathological form of mourning.

Plaintiff then worked for about two years for A & P in a salvage operation and was fortunate enough to find a protective foreman with whom he could form another "surrogate father” relation*89ship. He then was transferred to other work by A & P where he did not like his foreman. Only days after the transfer he fell from a ramp in what was termed a "trivial” incident. Plaintiff was X-rayed, but no physical damage was revealed. He worked one day and one hour after returning to work and never returned again.

The examining psychiatrists were in general agreement that plaintiff was a person with an extreme passive striving who sought a way of life in which he would be cared for by his wife and mother. He had lived all his life with his mother (excepting for a stint in the army). Even after a late marriage, he and his wife lived with his mother.

The psychiatrists agreed that these strivings and associated mental status long antedated his employment with defendant. Plaintiff’s psychiatrist said the death of plaintiff’s long-time plumber-employer "pulled the rug out from under him” and "[t]hen the obsessive-compulsive way of life crumbled under him and he could no longer carry out his work [plumbing]”. He felt depressed but found a job at a "reduced status” where he again could be "protected”. When he had to leave that work and that foreman, he became a "sitting duck” for the kind of injury sustained.

The injury at A & P, trivial as it was, afforded a convenient excuse to justify living a passive, dependent life.

Since leaving work, plaintiff was occasionally hospitalized for alcoholism, once by the probate court. He had cirrhosis of the liver. He was not again employed and died during the pendency of this case. His wife has been substituted for plaintiff as the executrix of his estate.

The referee found plaintiff to have been incur*90ably insane under the Sprute test. The WCAB affirmed. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

Walter L. Legut

Plaintiff was working as a journeyman window cleaner when he fell from a scaffold and fractured his skull (March 6, 1964). He was paid benefits until May 2, 1964 when he returned to work for the principal defendant. In March 1966 he commenced work at Chrysler Corporation at $3.57 an hour. (He previously had been earning $113 per week.)

The record indicates that plaintiff suffered from depression, dizziness, headaches and emotional instability following his accident. His memory had become so poor he could not remember which buttons to push when running a machine. After he had cut off part of his thumb at Chrysler, he had been transferred to work as a conveyer loader. His wife testified that she gave him lists of things to purchase or do. He had to be told what clothes to wear and what to eat. She also testified that he could no longer express himself and "talks in circles”. Plaintiff’s daughter testified to Mr. Le-gut’s change of behavior. Jean S. Braun, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, found plaintiff to test between mentally defective and borderline. Plaintiff’s and defendant’s psychiatrists diagnosed an "organic brain syndrome”. Defendant’s psychiatrist found plaintiff to be of borderline mentality. A neurosurgeon testified for defendant State Accident Fund that plaintiff was suffering from a "residual of quite a severe head injury” and that he "could not operate complex machinery, even of a moderate degree of sophistication”.

However, plaintiff was working in a "limited, but productive industrial job”, so the board found *91he did not qualify for "total and permanent” disability under Sprute.

Plaintiff at first, on May 5, 1968, filed a petition for compensation based on "incurable imbecility” and later amended it to include "incurable insanity”.

Both the referee and WCAB denied benefits applying the Sprute test. Chairman Gillman wrote for the WCAB:

"Rarely does this board see a more deserving plaintiff before it seeking the benefits of the act.” 1973 WCABO 1547, 1571.

However, the state of the law under Sprute precluded § 361(2)(f) compensation. WCAB also found he did not meet the burden of proof.

The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for a determination of whether plaintiff was an imbecile. It said:

"Plaintiff’s experts employed the Rorschach, Bender-Gestalt, and Wechsler tests to evaluate plaintiff’s intelligence. * * * The opinion of the board that plaintiff’s inability to translate the test results into the StanfordBinet scale, with the subsequent finding that he failed to meet his burden of proof, was prejudicial error.” 54 Mich App 404, 406; 221 NW2d 232 (1974).

It also applied the Sprute test.

II

After considerable study and reflection, we are convinced that the majority’s attempt to define precisely what constitutes the state of "incurable insanity or imbecility” creates more interpretation problems than it solves. In addition, it unduly expands the statutory language.

*92Implicit in the decision should be the recognition that "insanity” and "imbecility” are legal terms which require medical facts to establish their existence. There are so many variables possible to either mental state that any single definition is predestined to compound the confusion as to each.

Were we to write a definition for posterity, utilization of presently acceptable terminology could not withstand the inevitable changes in medical science and statutory law resulting from new discoveries or perceptions. The same result obtains from the majority’s attempts to define these terms without using medical terminology.

The Court’s introduction of definitional language different from any statutory or medical concept (i.e., "severe social dysfunction”, "severe cognitive dysfunction”, "quality of life”, "significant activity” and "comparable to [a physical disability]”) is no solution to the interpretation problem of the fact finder. To the contrary, it only adds to the burden.

Although we would not impose a precise definition, some guidance is warranted. To support a finding that a claimant is insane or imbecilic, the evidence should establish that the mental illness or mental handicap is of a truly catastrophic nature. Furthermore, a finding of entitlement to total and permanent disability benefits requires proof that the condition is "incurable”. It is important to note that incurability is no idle requirement but is further indication that the evidence must establish a catastrophic and irreversible condition before benefits may be awarded under § 361(2)(f).4_

*93The fact-finding duties are in the able hands of the referees and WCAB. They are to assess and weigh all the evidence and make findings as to whether the claimant is incurably insane or imbecilic. Expert testimony is most important. Consideration may be given also to the claimant’s wage-earning capacity, but, as we said in rejecting the Sprute test, such evidence is not determinative in and of itself. The claimant’s ability to function "normally” in a non-occupational setting is also relevant, although in and of itself it should not be determinative. In the final analysis, however, the decision regarding entitlement to total and permanent disability benefits belongs to the finder of fact. We are legally bound to rely on that judgment and not disturb it absent fraud or errors of law.

Summary

The combined impact of this majority opinion plus that of the Deziel triad of cases also released today is to lower the legislative standards entitling a claimant to a minimum of almost 16 years of unreviewable workmen’s compensation for worthy and unworthy alike. It is an undue and unnecessary burden upon other workers and consumers.

Under these opinions, if a person is found to have a "severe social dysfunction” (emphasis added) which he or she imagines/hallucinates ("honestly perceives”) is causally connected to employment, even if this is not true, thát person may be adjudged "incurably insane” under § 361(2)(f). The employer thereby is liable for at least 800 weeks of compensation for total and permanent disability.

For instance, a simple neurosis too comfortable *94to be abandoned could be viewed as work-related "incurable insanity” under this definition. Considering the nature of "insanity” or, in the Deziel cases, of neurosis, we must acknowledge reality to be elusive to and even avoided or unrecognized by the claimants.

In the same manner, if a person is found to have a "severe cognitive dysfunction” imagined to be work-related (even if not so), that person may be found entitled to a minimum 800 weeks of compensation.

These are concepts of work-related incurable insanity or imbecility which have grown neither from the medical nor the legal profession. Also, it is unlikely that the opinions reflect, even obliquely, the legislative intent at the time of the statute’s passage.

However, we do agree that the capacity to work should not be determinative of total and permanent disability, although it may be considered with other facts.

We would impose no restrictive definition of "insanity” or "imbecility” but would leave the fact finder flexible to make a determination from medical testimony according to the state of the medical science as of the time of the hearing plus other facts pertinent to the claim.

Part II reflects some guidelines which, among others, should be considered in a determination of "incurable insanity or imbecility”.

We would reverse and remand.

Anna Redfern, Joseph Pastaleniec and Walter L. Legut suffered work-related injuries, and compensation for general disability was paid.

In these cases, consolidated on appeal, the workers asserted that as a consequence of their physical injuries they suffered mental illness or cognitive loss constituting "incurable insanity or imbecility” and, therefore, additional compensation should be paid for "total and permanent disability".1

*71The facts and history of the litigation are set forth in fns 2-4.

The Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board declared that

—while in its judgment Redfern’s mental illness did not constitute "incurable insanity”, it was obliged by Sprute v Herlihy Mid-Continent Co, 32 Mich App 574; 189 NW2d 89 (1971), to find that she was incurably insane and to award compensation for total and permanent disability;2

*72—Pastaleniec’s "condition meets” the Sprute definition of incurable insanity;3

*73—although in its judgment Legut was incurably insane, he did not qualify under the Sprute definition; and that his cognitive loss did not constitute imbecility.4

*75The WCAB found for Redfern because although she seemed able to function normally away from work, her mental illness, as expressed in Sprute, "totally disabled” her from working. It found against Legut, even though it said his case was most appealing,5 because he was working and thus not "disabled”,6

*76In Pastaleniec, there is an additional issue, whether the claimed mental illness was caused by the work injury. The companion case of Deziel v Difco Laboratories, Inc (After Remand), 403 Mich 1; 268 NW2d 1 (1978), controls that issue.

We hold that the Court of Appeals did not, in Sprute, correctly define the term "incurable insanity”, and that the WCAB’s definition, in Legut, of "imbecility” is also incorrect.7 Our conclusions are *77stated in the penultimate paragraph of this opinion. We remand to the WCAB for further consideration of all three cases in light of this opinion and, in Pastaleniec, of the Deziel opinion.

I

We seek definitions of insanity and imbecility that serve the policies of the Worker’s Disability Compensation Act.

We agree with the Court of Appeals, in Sprute, that definitions of insanity developed for other purposes, e.g., in the areas of criminal law, civil commitment, testamentary or contractual capacity, would not serve the legislative purpose. Nor do we think that medical definitions should be determinative. Insanity is a legal term which doctors relate to their- own terminology with varying and sometimes opposing definitions; there is no consensus.

Before Sprute was decided, the WCAB declared that a worker is "insane” when his injury "affects *78or destroys his mental capacity to the degree that he is deranged and unfit to be employed because of the unreliability of his behavior with concomitant danger to himself and others”. Borg v Fisher Body Division of General Motors, 1969 WCABO 1246, 1258.

In Sprute the Court of Appeals declared that the WCAB’s Borg test was "too restrictive” and specifically rejected the operative phrase "because of the unreliability of his behavior with concomitant danger to himself and others”. The Court, in partial agreement with the WCAB, declared that the test should be "consistent with the basic principle that the employee’s disabling condition makes him unfit for employment. Such a test would be designed to permit the fact finder to allow compensation only when the injury has affected the employee’s mental capacity to the extent that it precludes him from gainful employment". Sprute v Herlihy Mid-Continent Co, supra, pp 578-579 (emphasis supplied).

The Court then stated a test which has been applied in subsequent cases, including the three cases now before us:

"An employee is incurably insane under MCL 412.10(b)(6); MSA 17.160(b)(6), if the occupationally-related mental or emotional illness which impairs the employee’s mental processes is of totally disabling proportions and is likely to be of long and indefinite duration, thus making gainful employment impossible.” Sprute v Herlihy Mid-Continent Co, supra, p 579.8

*79Sprute says, in effect, that a worker can recover total and permanent disability benefits for incurable insanity if

(1) he has a mental or emotional illness,

(2) the illness is work related,

(3) the impairment of his mental processes is of totally disabling proportions,

(4) it is likely to be of long and indefinite duration, and

(5) gainful employment is impossible.

We accept criteria 1, 2 and 4; the incapacity must be attributable to work-related mental illness expected to be of long duration. We do not accept criteria 3 and 5, requiring that the impairment of mental processes be totally disabling9 precluding gainful employment.

II

There are two broad categories of workers’ compensation benefits: scheduled benefits and general disability benefits.10 Scheduled benefits are awarded for specific medical losses without regard to whether there is a reduction of wage earning capacity;11 in general they are payable for permanent loss of a specific anatomical member or function, e.g., a foot, hand, sight in one eye. General disability benefits are awarded for a loss of wage *80earning capacity even if there is no speciñc medical loss.12

Devastating specific losses enumerated in the statute, e.g., both legs or sight of both eyes, are deemed a "total and permanent disability”.13 "Incurable insanity or imbecility” is so enumerated.

Sprute and Borg both make "unfitness” for employment a precondition to qualification for total and permanent disability benefits.

With the exception, however, of a distinctive category, "loss of industrial use” of limbs, added to the total and permanent disability definition after its original formulation,14 entitlement to compensation for total and permanent disability does not depend on whether the loss affects wage earning capacity.

Since scheduled benefits for all specific losses, major or relatively minor, are payable without regard to loss of wage earning capacity, except for the distinctive and atypical "industrial use” loss, it would not be consonant with the design of the act to regard wage earning capacity as determinative of entitlement to total and permanent disability benefits for incurable insanity and imbecility alone.

Just as a sightless or legless worker may recover total and permanent disability benefits for work-caused loss of both legs or sight without regard to whether there is or continues to be any effect on *81his wage earning capacity, so too a person suffering work-related mental illness or cognitive impairment of comparable severity may recover such benefits whether or not his wage earning capacity is affected.

All the specific losses affect the quality of life apart from wage earning capacity. A person who suffers the loss of an anatomical member or sight in one eye is impaired in his ability to function normally in everyday life even though there may be no effect on his wage earning capacity. If he loses two members (both legs, both arms, or a leg and an arm) or sight of both eyes, the impairment of normal function and the effect on the worker’s personal life is serious.

Loss of mental function or a cognitive loss constituting "incurable insanity or imbecility” has a similar severe affect on the worker’s personal life without regard to whether it affects his wage earning capacity.

Mental and cognitive functions are not readily measured. The severity of loss that satisfies the statutory standard is not subject to precise description.

We are persuaded that the legislative purpose was to provide compensation for severe mental illness or cognitive loss comparable in its impact on the quality of the personal, nonvocational life of the worker to the loss of two members or sight of both eyes, the other permanent and total disability categories in the original formulation of the present total and permanent disability provisions. (See fn 1 for text.) Such a loss may also affect the worker’s wage earning capacity, but that is not determinative.15

*82A worker who suffers such a severe work-related mental illness or cognitive loss is entitled to total and permanent disability benefits. Where there is no such severe impairment of the quality of life, total and permanent disability benefits, separate and apart from general disability benefits, may not be awarded even if the mental illness or cognitive loss deprives the worker of wage earning capacity.

Before the act was amended in 1965 to require payment of benefits for the duration of a general disability,16 benefits were not required to be paid beyond 500 weeks unless the worker suffered a total and permanent disability. Necessarily, many workers who suffered serious general disabilities not deemed "total and permanent” were limited to 500 weeks of compensation.

Some persons who before the 1965 amendment suffered work-related mental illness without severe impairment of the quality of life but who as a consequence are unable to work may be in greater need of compensation than a person who is able to work and whose "only” loss is personal or social. Nevertheless it would be disconsonant with the design of the act, absent specific legislative directive (e.g., the particularized "industrial use” definition), to treat a disability which may not severely *83affect the quality of the worker’s personal life as a total and permanent disability.

Ill

We are mindful of the imprecision of "severe”, "comparable”, and "quality of life”, but nevertheless have concluded that it is better that further definition evolve in the administrative and judicial decision of individual cases, including these cases on remand.

We have considered the suggestions that we equate the legal term "insanity” with the medical term "psychosis”. There is however, no consensus regarding the meaning of that medical term. What one doctor will describe as latent psychosis another will describe as borderline psychosis or intermittent psychosis or even severe neurosis. Medical definitions change through the years, new terms are added, and, old terms are modified or superseded. The terms "derangement”17 and "reality”18 have varying meanings. Moreover, the Legislature did not use medical terminology.

Definitions of insanity developed in other areas of the law are not helpful. A worker may know right from wrong (a criminal test), but be unable to function in a normal social setting, just as there are criminally insane persons who for long periods of time function normally in society. Similarly, a person may have the mental capacity to stand trial, to contract, to execute a will, and yet be unable to function in normal society or vice versa. While for purposes of involuntary commitment, evidence of danger to himself and others (an aspect of the Borg test) may be an appropriate test *84and clearly would indicate severe,social dysfunction, it is too restrictive for the purposes of the act to require evidence that the mental illness poses a risk of physical harm.

The central definitional question in these cases concerns the severity of dysfunction that will be regarded as satisfying the statutory standard. Derangement, personality disintegration, inability to recognize or cope with reality, may constitute the requisite dysfunction, but it also may be established by other evidence of severe social dysfunction in significant non-vocational activity having an impact on the quality of life comparable to the loss of limbs or of sight.

Cognitive dysfunction may be so severe, comparable to loss of limbs or of sight, even if tests developed for young children show the worker— possibly because of retained learning — to be above the level deemed to indicate imbecility in children.19

Legut urges that where the worker is unable to learn or perform tasks except the simplest kinds he is imbecilic. We are wary of tests and formulations, whether related or unrelated to the facts of a particular case. Legut’s inability to learn or perform tasks except the simplest kind may indeed constitute imbecility if there is the requisite impact on his personal life, but in the first instance that is for the WCAB to decide. And if Legut recovers on that basis it should not be understood that only such evidence establishes imbecility.

Similarly we make no attempt at this time to identify behavioral evidence that indicates severe social dysfunction constituting incurable insanity.20

*85We conclude that a worker’s mental illness is "insanity” if he suffers severe social dysfunction and that a worker’s intellectual impairment is "imbecility” if he suffers severe cognitive dysfunction. Social or cognitive dysfunction is "severe” if it affects the quality of the worker’s personal, nonvocational life in significant activity comparably to the loss of two members or sight of both eyes, and is incurable if it is unlikely that normal functioning can be restored. The question whether the mental illness or intellectual impairment is work-related is to be decided in accordance with Deziel v Difco Laboratories, Inc (After Remand), 403 Mich 1; 268 NW2d 1 (1978).

Remanded to the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board for further consideration in light of this opinion and, in Pastaleniec, of Deziel, supra. We do not retain jurisdiction.