Cheese

A new virtual reality theater mimics the disorder to educate doctors and police.

Link

Christina Mirabilis

That was really interesting. I wonder if anyone that has schizophrenia here can tell us if it seems like a realistic portrayal, because if it is I think it's great.

It's like there's a huge chasm between someone suffering from mental illness and the rest of the world when it comes to describing the mental states that we experience. There isn't a common language that ensures that both parties understand what the other is trying to communicate, and it's really frustrating and frightening sometimes when there is no way to describe what's happening. I'm sure that it's just as frustrating for caregivers and law enforcement.

BriAnna

science imo.

Newton's Cat

Maybe they could make one about how "suggestible" some schizophrenics are?

A schizophrenic is walking along the pavement. His mind is clear ... but, suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, he starts thinking graphic thoughts about doing really NASTY things to people.

"That's not my mind?" he thinks to himself ... and looks behind him.

Prowling along behind him is a police car ... a policeman is looking out of the window at him.

The police car slowly passes him ... the policeman moves his head to keep his gaze on him.

The expression on the policeman's face is "murderous".

Then the police car drives away.

The moment he looked at the policeman's face the thoughts and images of murder dissipated.

Try finding a psychiatrist who won't put the label 'Psychotic' on you if you tell them things like that. It's got to the point nowadays ... with most schizophrenics being medicated ... that even the schizophrenics think I'm crazy.

StarryNight

Sorry, the PC I am using won't play the video.

StarryNight

I've listened to the audio and well such auditory hallucinations are not essential to schizophrenia.

For me hallucinations were just like ethereal succubi and incubi entering in my world, like my eyes had been opened to a spiritual realm where "projections" of others wills travelled through space and into my life. They were not like h.d. real or opaque, but they seemed to represent a seperate reality in their own "ghostly, fantastical" way.

Something like this, but a lot more pretty, and noticably "mental" or spiritual/psychic in their phenomenology, and not so sharp as that but rather being a vision which was half feeling of presence mixed with one's correlating ruminations:

At other times I would see family members of famous people, and I thought that (their phenomenology made it clear) they had something to say/communicate, but I didn't "hear voices". The closest I came to that was picking up on stranger's expressions and interpreting them verbally in my own head, or having imaginary conversations in my mind with significant others.

Corona688

Yeah, that's the part that's really hard to simulate. They can percieve ordinary things in really weird ways. Anyone here recall the poster that left his job to travel to New Mexico and pick up a hot rock because his television told him to make a blood sacrifice? Who posted that with the expectation that we'd believe his actions made sense?

It's also hard to make it realistic in that the human race has been watching movies for generations now. I don't duck and cover when a train rushes at the screen, I know it's a movie. Yet if I had schitzophrenic experiences for real I'd probably freak out.

StarryNight

I remember him.


Maybe. There's little "essential" (but I'm not a doctor of course so how shopuld I know) to the malady, but rather it has a definition which includes symptoms which may or may not be present, but if you have a few off the list you are diagnosed. And one persons delusions for instance may cause him distress, whareas another may be on cloud nine. One may have visionary religious content, another be bothered by paranoia about the CIA, and another neither of the above and hear voices from his dead cat. What's clear though is it's not like a hole in the heart or broken leg where pretty much that same symptoms occur: the mind is more complex than the bones or heart and thereofre open to more permutations of illness and experience. You could think that the train image (or pizza even) was your ultimate victory against "the system" broadcast to the world, or something like that, or a sign that you were really a professional boxer or something even motre bizarre, or even morerately normal. You might even recognose the experience as sickly and go seek help.

StarryNight

I've had experiences just like that. I wouldn't class them as "suggestible" but rather in the category "someone or something can read my mind".

BTW by mentioning a dead cat I meant nothing in relation to you. It was an accident. I hope you land on your feet or "paws" or whatever.

And...in relation to simulations in general, I think that the general project model was developed by Patricia Deegan, who made tapes for law officers to listen to - tapes of s/c like voices. I do not know if she (a clinical psychhologist and schizophrenic) was involved in the current scheme.

Corona688

I'm not a doctor either, but I'd add one "essential". As I understand it, just having these symptoms doesn't make one schizophrenic; being unable to differentiate them from reality does. Something in them has a hard time grasping the concept that experiencing something doesn't make it true, or at least a hard time applying it to themselves.