A few years ago NPR did a story called “The Sights and Sounds of Schizophrenia” which tells about a training program created by Janssen Pharmaceutica, a pharmaceutical company that specializes in treatment for Schizophrenia.
I watched the 5 minute video just one time 5 years ago and it literally changed me. It was such a powerful and moving experience that I cannot forget it and it altered my perception of mental illness forever.
I’ve tried to tell people about it over the years, but it’s just something you have to see, so finally I searched and searched until I found it again so I could put it on the blog. The only problem is that the original was a crappy RealMedia recording. So… I had to convert it to a format that could be uploaded and embedded here so you can watch it without having to install the RealPlayer.
The textbook description of schizophrenia is a listing of symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior. But what does schizophrenia really feel like? NPR’s Joanne Silberner reports on a virtual reality experience that simulates common symptoms of the mental illness.
Silberner, who experienced the simulation, says it works this way: “For five to 10 minutes, someone wanting to know what it feels like to have untreated schizophrenia puts on goggles and headphones, and sees and hears a range of hallucinations. You can choose your virtual reality — what happens on a trip to the doctor’s office, or on a ride on a city bus.” In the program she experienced, a caseworker takes the schizophrenia patient to a grocery store with a pharmacy in the back, to refill a prescription.
To create the virtual reality project, technical director Stephen Streibig consulted a group of people with schizophrenia, including Daniel Frey, 26. Frey describes what he and Silberner experienced in the program: “When you first walk into the pharmacy, you’re walking through the aisles and there are people staring at you, just staring at you from every aisle. And there’s one instance where there is a woman sort of protecting her children from you when you walk through the aisle.
Even though schizophrenia patient Frey consulted on the project, he found the simulation too disturbing to sit all the way through. When Silberner tells him she was terrified by the experience, Frey responds, “Yeah, you ought to be… Imagine not being able to take off the goggles, the helmet.”
Here is the simulation video. Please be aware that this is disturbing. It’s going to creep you out and you won’t be able to get it out of your head, but it’s just a taste of what this disease does to people and at least YOU can stop it at any time…
If you found this as informative as I did please help spread the word by using your favorite social bookmarking site (at the top of the post – Digg, Technorati, etc.), e-mailing it to a friend or just show it to a colleague in the office. I think the more people that see this, the greater the tolerance we’ll have for those less fortunate than ourselves.
If you happen to have RealPlayer installed and would like to see the original version, which is just slightly higher quality, here it is. I do NOT recommend installing the RealPlayer just to watch this however.
Related posts
- Redfin.com – The Real Estate Revolution is ComingShareThe Real Estate world has been changing dramatically since average people began to gain access to MLS listings on line....
- The Coolest Photo Technology I’ve Ever Seen!ShareFolks, this is big!!! If you really investigate just one post on my blog, make it this one! It’s not...
- Tweet Scan and the Woopra Twitter-StormShareSomeone pointed me in the direction of Tweet Scan, which is a tool that searches the popular micro-blogging site Twitter....
- Google Wave – It’s New! You’re Gonna Want it! But What Is It?ShareFirst of all, before you even watch the video you should go to the Google Wave home page and request...
{ 121 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
It’s funny. This didn’t bother me one bit…Hmmmm I wonder why?
However, everyone that has seen it, is bothered by it. They find it disturbing, I guess it is all in the mind of what we can controll. Seeing things, hearing things. I guess it all comes wiht my life as is. Kinda used to it. However, this video is a good insight on what people go through with this problem.
i feel odd, this didnt affect me or creep me out or anything. I may show this to my class while doing a presentation on this illness
i am a psychiatric nurse in the uk. i so wish that we knew what caused and could control the symptoms of schizophrenia – i try and compare it to diabetes and encourage my clients/service users to consider their diagnosis like this.
i would like the press to acknowledge that there are many people with schizophrenia that are not and will never be homicidal maniacs and would never hurt anyone even in the midst of the most horrible delusional ideation.
it is not a career choice and the sooner we recognize this and begin to accept, acknowledge and support those with schizophrenia the sooner that people with this diagnosis will be able to recover some of their lives
this was freaky.
you have scitzophrenia??
I’m diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia.. It’s very difficult to demonstrate what it truely is like to be a schizophrenic. I hear voices all day long.. My only escape is when I fall asleep.. What is hard to portray is that the voices comment on something that is hard to simulate. They respond to what it is you may be thinking at any given moment.. This video just shows how outside activity effects you and not internal..
Thnx for yhis video!I always wanted to know what this illness feel like, and the weird thing is it did distort my mind a little like my equilibrium was off balance.Anyway it was a neat and enlightening expereence!
This is literally the worst example ever. I am schizophrenic and this is not even close to anything I’ve ever experienced. But, if you feel this has helped you understand this problem more… Good for you. I feel it was a waste.
this was a very new thing to me.i saw a special on it on OPRAH it moved me, i would like to work with people like this or have a job that involves helping them.
This video is made by a drug company that sells antiphsychotic medication! I dont have this illness but from what i have read and understand, it simply doesnt seem as simple as this example. I would almost guess that it would be more of an interactive dialogue, not just voices being mean to you. I would imagine that having this illness isnt just having scary voices all the time. Just as an episode can be scary as this example, I feel that patients dealing with this illness wouldnt be so tempted to stop taking their meds if this was the only result. Dont schizophrenics have episodes that are intellectually engaging? imaginitive? creative?
You must remember, schizophrenics tend to have complex delusions that mere people like you and i could never fathom. A lot of them have high IQ’s and i would guess that the extra “imagination” that fuels these scary episodes can also fuel some pretty amazing ones too. You have to wonder how they get from logical to paranoid. They have the intellect to build these delusions based on hallucinations. Its comparable to the overactive part of a mathmaticians brain when he is about to crack string theory. They simply have the intellect to consider these (maybe crazy)possibilities. Pair that up with the normal insecure thoughts of regular human beings and you have a paranoid episode. Genius meets normal person (and totally over analyses it)
Of course someones happiness and wellbeing are top priority, but for the sake of understanding schizophrenia, lets not let a drug company tell us how we are supposed to feel about our loved ones. Schizophrenia is something that you should learn about by talking to a doctor, a patient, or someone with experience dealing with the illness.
Its not only unfair, but naive to assume that “taking this pill” is all that schizophrenic people need. We dont know enough about schizophrenia to rule weather serving people doses of toxins to kill the “abnormal” part of their brain is right or not (especially in kids and those who cant make informed decisions themselves). They may not fit into our current society without medications, but maybe that begs an even more important question.
I dont want to say that people with this illness shouldnt be medicated, but i believe the illness deserves much more study as to the effects on the human brain, how it effects thought and how it can be beneficial to learning.
Just like snake venom can become a life saver, schizophrenia may just hold the key for stunning advances in the human brain.
“Abnormalities”, afterall, is what pushed us to evolve into what and who we are today. Maybe WE just have to get a bit smarter before we can recognize the amazing feats that these people brains are achieving on a daily basis.
I mean wouldnt schizophrenia be great if the voices said nice things? Or helped you solve problems? Maybe when we advance medicine ( or our own thinking) a bit more we can turn an “illness” like this into the “genius” that this world so desperatley needs.
Erica,
You wrote a wonderful letter that practically brought tears to my eyes. My beloved brother had schizophrenia. Before he had this illness, he was the best brother and a wonderful concerned person. He did not deserve the life he was doomed to live after his illness took hold. My brother, too, was a brilliant young man, destined for a good future. After becoming ill, he was never able to hold down a job and lived primarily at home while my mother was alive meaning he spent his adult life in and out of a Missouri state mental institution. After my mother’s death at age 61, my brother was returned back to the hospital and never returned home.
According to my parents, the best and kindest care my brother ever received was at the VA Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas; however, my parents missed being able to visit him often so brought him back to Missouri. When my brother was first becoming ill, my father and he had horrible shouting matches, but my father didn’t know what was wrong with him. Many years later, my father believed that if my brother admitted his illness, he would be fine. One summer in particular, I wanted to bring my brother home to live with me, but my father would not permit it.
My brother died an earlier death at age 54, choking to death on a peanut butter sandwich. At this time, he was in a group home.
Yes, it would be absolutely great if a person experiencing schizophrenia had voices that helped him/her solve problems. What other people need to realize is these people are human beings, too. Thank you for your wonderful letter.
Sydney, age 66
Right now when people sees this, it does not bother them whatsoever, but imagine having to live with these “whispers” inside your mind for you entire life. I would say the whole idea of the disease is creepy. I was really listening to the audio and after you watch it about five times, you will get a sense of paranoia that sometime in the future you will get this, schizophrenia.
I am also diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia. To me, I will describe some situations. I feel ‘normal’, but I hear a lot of sounds. I try to tune everything out. I am only 17 and it’s hard to have a normal life, when you hear people whispering your name randomly. Every time I hear the voices, I shake, I get so freaked out. I will be spending time with my boyfriend and either think he said something to me (then I answer him), or I ask “did you say anything?”. I will be sitting in a car, and see someone walk by my window, and when I look to see who walked by, they are gone. When I am at work, I will see someone walking behind me. I always feel like someone is behind me. I am constantly looking over my shoulders. I will be going down the street, and see someone, but when I look again. They are gone. That is my life in a nut shell. It happens everyday. I can even hear their footsteps.
I am a sufferer of sz. When I was on this medication called invega the voices and garbage that happens normally to a person with sz got out of control like 500x more. I was seeing faces in the shower door, and when I`m reading something with pix of people, when I looked at them through the corners of my eyes, they would sneering and making faces at me, and when I was a school girl, I would be always looking back to see if anyone was following me and I`d have this weird feeling…
I haven`t seen the sz recreation thing, and truthfully, I don`t care to either. I have my own shit to deal with.
I`m sure that your audience would nonsufferers.
I really feel for people who have this. I am somewhat normal if there even is such a thing anymore. I currently have been diagnosed with ADD. Erica I agree with you. I feel that my “curse” is my greatest ally. I really feel for people with this. This stuff is fascinating to me. It is interesting cause I don’t think however hard we try to see it from the other side none of us really know unless you really have it. I know that with my ADD that is how it has been. I had always known something was not right however could never put my thumb on it. Anyhow I had been on adderall but the side effects out weighed the original symptoms. So I feel for anyone with this or any other mental health disorder. I pray for us all to find peace and happiness.
I have a family history of schizophrenia, my older brother deveolped symptoms in his teens and was catotonic for some time, my family did not want anyone to know of his illness they are in denial to this day and have isolated themselves from him. I developed symptoms in my early teens and hid them from my family and my friends, it started with feelings of being disoriented and panic in of all places the school cafeteria, each time afterward a feeling of dread and panic would arise at the thought of having to go eat lunch everyday till I finished school. My symptoms became increasingly worse over time as I continued to isolate myself from any tangible social relationships. I began to question why I was feeling the way I was I had delusions of having several life threatening diseases until three years ago I fell in to a full blown paranoid delusion I completely withdrew into myself into a terrifying delusion and was hospitalized and finally given medication, at the time I was admitted I did not recognize myself in the mirror and was in a severe depression as well. Im thankful my wife and family admitted me because I would probably Killed myself otherwise. After three years of treatment I would say Im stable most days, I still hear voices, see things and feel disoriented at times, I learned this happens when I overwork or dont get enough rest. Im still at my job even though I get some ridicule for who I am it hurts sometimes, but I try to laugh through it , looking back on my life now I realize Ive always been different but that is what makes us human Ive finally accepted who I am and just strive to live in the moment im given. Im 38 now I feel as though I’ve lived two lives already, I do regret not seeking treatment earlier but I was afraid to tell my parents what I was feeling after all my mother asked me please dont grow up and be like your brother, words cut so deep. I pray anyone who might just be developing symptoms to seek treatment immediately so you may have a more enjoyable social existence.
I can’t imagine dealing with the confusion of voices constantly in your head. I deal with appoximately 17 people in my department at work and the constant interruption throughout the day makes it difficult at times to focus on getting anything done. I’m not trying to compare my job with schizophrenia by any means. I’m only trying to imagine the horror of constant voices/thoughts pulling your focus away from reality during all of your waking hours. I don’t know how people manage to function at all with this disease.
Brina
This didn’t weird me out or anything. Though, I do have the initial signs of schizophrenia, and my dad is schizo – so it worries me in a sense of how real it could become. Damnit.
Anyways, good video :P.
Well, don’t assume those that thinks it’s all or mostly nature over nurture is a hate mongers. My mother told me when I was 16 that if Schitzophrenia had run in her family she would not have had children and she believes Naziism was a greater evil than Communism.
i always feel like someone’s gonna poison me. i hate medication. i hate doctors the most and i would rather help myself. :( i dont trust doctors. at all.
The video would not load. Its through Revver which I’ve tried and I’ve had problems with, no wonder.
← Previous Comments
{ 1 trackback }