Schizophrenia Simulation

Schizophrenia is a mental illness causing a set of negative, positive, and cognitive symptoms; however, the hallmark characteristics the disorder calls to mind are the positive symptoms, hallucinations and delusions. Hallucinations involve the introduction of non-real elements into a person’s perception of reality. These can occur in all the different senses. Some, for instance, will smell strange odors or feel bugs crawling on their skin–though the most common hallucinations are auditory and visual. Delusions, on the other hand, are false beliefs a person is convinced are certainly true. With schizophrenia, these are typically preposterous and paranoid. Many schizophrenics believe the government is out to persecute them.

Since these symptoms appear in media, we often have preconceived ideas about what constitutes a schizophrenics mind. Graduate student Alexandra Logan refers to thriller movies such as Black Swan, Shutter Island, and Friday the 13th, saying these movies support negative stereotypes like “people with mental illness are violent, unpredictable, untreatable and… evil.” While I can’t say I personally have this point of view, I can say I love thriller movies and sadly have rarely considered this harmful perspective.

Through watching a video  attempting to accurately portray the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, I sought to gain a new understanding of how a schizophrenic individual might see the world during a psychotic episode. The scene opens with a regular, domestic day bathed in tranquility. Then, steadily, voices begin to creep into the audio. They call me worthless and lazy, taunting and telling me I’d be better off dead or how to never trust anyone, even the pizza delivery boy at the door. Food is poison. Medication is poison. The weather is out to get me. After a while, an eerie sensation begins to sneak up o me, and I realize how difficult it would be to disobey these voices because of how sure, how commanding they are. As we learned in previous units, humans are hardwired to go along with an authority figure’s commands even if we believe them to be morally reprehensible as demonstrated by the Milgram experiment in which an incredibly high percentage of adults “electrocuted” a (thankfully nonexistent) opponent on the command of a researcher. This video reminds me not only would I be pressured into doing the same, but how frustrating a life lived like this would be. If you ignored the voices, you’d get in trouble as perceived by your reality. If you listened to them, you’d consider yourself a monster.

How overwhelming. I understand the high suicide rates associated with schizophrenia on a first hand basis now.

Additionally, the video caused me to consider how difficult social situations would be when your sense of reality is so shaky. Never knowing when a person’s actions are a hallucination or due to a delusion would make it almost impossible to trust anyone. I was also alarmed by the lack of safe space to retreat to. During a psychotic episode, nowhere is safe, not even when you close your eyes.

Sources:

Delusions. (n.d.). Retrieved May 7, 2016, from http://www.minddisorders.com/Br-Del/Delusions.html

Logan, A. (2014, December 11). Schizophrenia in the Media Vs. Real Life. Retrieved May 7, 2016, from http://www.skepticink.com/gps/2014/12/11/schizophrenia-in-the-media-vs-real-life/

Types of Schizophrenia – A day in the life of (Scary) Luke Murphy [Video file]. (2011, July 21). Retrieved May 7, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWYwckFrksg