that was super intense!

Wow, I hear that stuff all the time :(

i have this and didn’t know it was a disease

wow i dont know how they can deal with something that intence

i cant speak for everyone with schizophrenia, but some of that shit was exaggerated and they left out some stuff i would have added.

good idea though

Sechy and Raiden – You may want to find a local councelor to talk to about this subject. It is normal for people to talk to themselves as they think, but if you are hearing other people’s voices that is not normal. There are methods to help you stop being bothered by those other people. If you don’t know anyone to talk to I suggest that you find a local church and tell the minister, or find a local hospital and tell a doctor.

Danja – I certainly can’t speak for people with this problem either but I’m guessing that, like any other disease, there is probably a wide range of symptoms. I would imagine that some people are much worse off than this video portrays and some are less affected.

Take care,

John

[...] Via One Man’s Blog, this video, from a training program created by Janssen Pharmaceutica, a pharmaceutical company that specializes in treatment for Schizophrenia (they make Risperdal and Invega), vividly demonstrates what it’s like to suffer from the symptoms of schizophrenia. [...]

That video is intense. I’ve known many people who suffered from schizophrenia, and known the textbook description, but watching the video makes it obvious how hard that is to deal with.

Did you know it’s being used to train police officers as well?

I’m glad people are starting to learn more about mental illness, which is simply an illness like cancer or diabetes; but sufferers are often treated like demons.

Schizophrenia is not a mental illness, it is a classification for abnormal behaviour and mental function that doesn’t fit into any of the other classifications. It is basically the ‘Hysterical woman syndrome’ of the modern age. this does not mean that people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia do not have mental problems, but the term schizophrenia is used as a dumping ground for unclassifiable ‘abnormal’ symptoms. Also, I feel that treating symptoms of what is thought of as a disease, when there is, as far as I know, no physical test that can show there is a disease, highly suspect. this is not to say everyone should stop taking their meds, but many psychiatrists say it is a chemical imbalance, when there seems to be no physical evidence of it.
Please note, I am not saying that psychiatry is evil, as is currently in fashion, but I am saying it needs to move away from theory into Neuroscience.

Sam,

I am in no way qualified to argue for or against your point, but I will say that it seems to be the concensus on the net that schizophrenia is indeed a mental illness.

For example, Schizophrenia.com, Mayo Clinic, National Alliance on Mental Illness, US Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Schizophrenia Foundation, US Surgeon General, and the Library of Congress. For even more, try this Google Search.

John

John, on a cursory scan of those websites, focusing mainly on the “causes of” sections, the almost all start with “it is not known…” or something similar. And then they go on to say that their “brain structure is different” but then proceed to say that the differences are found in non schizophrenics, and not all schizophrenics have the differences. As I said many of the people diagnosed with Schizophrenia do have mental problems, but many of them do not have the same problems, but get lumped in together as schizophrenics. Basically I think Schizophrenia will go the same rout as Psychotic, which is to say, it’s still on the books, but only describes a wide and vague class of related disorders. The problem is that because we so far have only been diagnosing these diseases on the extremely subjective points of views of the patients and opinions of the psychiatrists, we have no objective way to test for this apparent disease. Once again I must stress I am not saying that the people who are diagnosed have no mental disorders, but I do worry that people are being misdiagnosed with a disease that has, so far, no physical proof of it’s existence.

WOOOW!!! really weird… but the quality of the video ruins it a little…
are the voices heard outside as other sounds or are they heard like in the head of the schizophrenic person???

Karl,

The voices are heard as if they are coming from different places all around you. It actually sounds like there are people with you, talking to you and making you paranoid.

My wife used to work for a mental health care facility and she told me that one of their clients who was schizophrenic related a story that he used to go to the exact same restaraunt for lunch every single day. He had to stick to routines so he could determine what was real and what was not…

Anyway, he would sit down at a table and sometimes some other person would sit down with him and start bugging him. He knew these people were not real because no one just sits down at your table, but they looked and sounded as real as the people who worked there.

It would be very, very scary to live this kind of existence.

John

What exactly are you saying Sam?

That schizophrenics are imagining it, or that there are several different illnesses involved?

Lee,
I have no clue why you would ask if I am saying that people are imagining their disease, and frankly am going to have to refuse to rise to that bait.

If I may interject before anyone gets too upset here… :-)

My interpretation of Sam’s comments is merely that he is making the point that schizophrenia is one of those rare diseases where one cannot point to actual empirical evidence of the illness. For example, with measles we can see the bumps, but with this disease we cannot detect any physical irregularity. It is truly a “mental” illness.

For this reason, I believe Sam’s assertion is that medical professionals need to be extremely careful about the diagnosis because the disease and treatment may be different in each case, unlike measles where everyone needs the same medicine.

Although I see how Lee’s direct questions could be interpreted as “baiting”, I think it’s also fair to assume he was legitimately searching for clarity on Sam’s position. Hopefully my interpretation of everyone’s statements is correct and this may clarify the matter?

John

I think you sum up my point fairly well, and would add that we dearly need to do physical research int this, and all mental illness, to determine whether it is a causal or correlational connection between symptoms and physical evidence. Is Schizophrenia an actual disease? Or is it a class of symptoms? Like many physical diseases can cause a fever and a headache, perhaps many physical brain/nervous disorders can cause schizophrenic symptoms, and if this is the case, providing the same treatment in all or most cases may not be a good idea. So my basic concern is of a rush to diagnose schizophrenia, and then medicate it may be harmful before we know the root cause or causes. It may be we are doing more long term harm than good. But I fully understand that what is being done now is the best option in a bad situation.

I happen to have been diagnosed with ‘drug-induced paranoid schizophrenia with borderline parkansins, catotania and selective muteism’, some of the worst symptoms you can get with that disorder both positive and negative- I was 17, this was 4 years ago. While, again, I like the idea- and it’s good that he chose a pharmacy, in my opinion; things always seem more for your benefit in public not exactly……….so loud(?).
Kinda hard to explain. (which is why i was very vague before).
Sam, is it possible that you are thinking it is not a brain disease but a brain disorder- maybe thats what you were thinking originally? It certainly is classified as a mental illness, as is Parkinson’s as well as Alzheimer’s and Bipolar Disorder.

I could never begin to understand or comprehend life with this illness. My brother has paranoid schizophrenia, the respect i have for him and anyone else battling this illness is massive. I’ve seen first hand how soul destroying it is to the effected person while the episodes are at there worst. For these very unfortunate people to still have the strength to fight this after years of predictable torment amazes me. although my brothers not living in my area any more he is a source of constant inspiration to me, as is anyone in his situation. Im sorry if i sound patronizing it was not my intention!

Lukus,

I don’t think you sound patronizing at all. You raise a very good point. It takes incredible bravery to go through life facing this kind of challenge day after day. Personally, I don’t think I could handle it. I’d probably rather end my life than suffer like this.

So I understand what you mean when you say you are inspired by their ability to keep going.

John

I am not able to view the video – is there another site I can view it at?

Sarah,

I’m sorry you’re having trouble. Unfortunately this is the only site on the Internet at the moment with this content. :-(

I forgot to mention that you need the Adobe Flash player to view the video, so can you try installing that and then see if you can view it?

Finally, if all else fails, you can go over to the Revver site where I uploaded it and they allow you to download a Quicktime version of the movie. But that is going to mean you’ll have to install Apple Quicktime, which is far more of a hassle than the Adobe Flash.

Let me know if you run into issues…

John

Look at this man’s art work as decends further into his mental illness…

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/22/schizophrenia_aging_.html

Hello,

I realize that this has nothing to do with the topic of your post, but I’m assuming that you are schizophrenic. Unfourtunatly, I feel obliged to inform you that more likely than not the symtoms of your “illness” have been manufactured by an outside force. Whether you choose to believe it or not, there exists a global conspiracy on scale almost too large to fathom. The perpertrators of this conspiracy are occultists – they practice the black arts. Now your first instincts may be to dismiss this as complete nonsense, but ask yourself this; if a group of individuals were practicing black magic that inflicted great harm on a great many people, would it not be in their best interests to deceive people into believing that such powers did not exist and were entirely fictional? And if it just so happened that these individuals had complete control over the media, government, and religious institutions, would they not do just that?

The reality of the situation is that more often than not, psychiatric patients have been attacked by “magic spells” (for lack of a better description) cast by warlocks/witches/wizards/etc. that has compromised their psychological integrity. Usually, this nefarious individual is a freemason.

I myself am Bipolar, and in the past I too would have dismissed such claims as ridiculous and that anyone making such claims was in need of some seroquel. But one day, I decided that enough was enough and that I was tired of being bilked by pharmaceutical companies for a product that was making me physically ill from a host of nasty side effects. It made sense to at least take a shot and live without any medication. I mean, I could always go back on if it didn’t work out, right?

So I began the process of weaning myself of my meds, and things proceeded quite smoothly. That is, until I started to see people I recognized from around campus repeatedly, over and over, like they were following me around. Well, I won’t go into the details of my whole experience, but it ended up with a masonic recruiter inviting me into his home asking me if I wanted to be a freemason. This guy made no bones about his group’s interest in the occult and their agenda. I respectfully declined, since I had no desire to be party to the abuse and manipulation of my fellow man.

These people have great power, not only because they control all of our major institutions, but because they have mastery over the spiritual energy that is present in all of us. While this proposition will sound completley insane to you, they do have the ability to control someone’s mind, to communicate telepathically, to manipulate your endochrine system, among other things. For instance, the voices that so many schizophrenics claim to suffer from are almost certainly the result of a warlock/witch/wizard either actually communicating with them telepathically or manipulating the auditory centres of said person’s brain.

You might be suprised, but a A LOT of people hear voices, people you would never suspect. A wall street banker or university professor might hear voices all the time, only they are aware that these voices are actually those of another person who is intentionally communicating with them, so they don’t start freaking out. This is because they are affiliated with the freemasons, and have been properly initiated and trained to use telepathy.