Schizophrenia Simulator: Empathy Saves

When seeing someone on the street and talking to themselves people are often scared. In some cases, people will even make fun of these vulnerable people. The population I am speaking about is schizophrenics. These diagnoses can be very scary especially for someone who has not been around this illness before. Hallucinations can be different throughout the populations such as visual, olfactory (smell), and auditory hallucinations. Some other symptoms include disorganized speech and catatonic behavior . Catatonic behavior which is excited bodily movement or rigid body movement. Yeah not fun when you see it. All of them can be difficult in their own way. I say difficult because not all hallucinations are scary. I have met some people who simply just hear a little girl talking to them making jokes. This hallucination resulted in them laughing at inappropriate and well after he told some jokes the little girl would say, well dam it was to funny not to laugh. There was one woman on the psychiatric unit who saw colors and loved to go to art everyday so she can show her therapist what she was seeing. In some cases, auditory and visual hallucinations are degrading and horrifying. These hallucinations are unfortunately the ones that people here about the most. Listen to this hour clip of auditory hallucinations. To get the best effect put ear buds in and close your eyes. I challenge you one step further to walk around and try to talk to people while listening to this recording.​

:WARNING THIS VIDEO MAY BE DISTURBING FOR SOME, IF NECESARRY TURN OFF AND READ ON:: 

How long did you make it one minute, ten minutes, thirty minutes, how about an hour? I only made it through about twelve minutes of the video. I just couldn’t handle the lady telling me that people thought I was worthless, and we need to go “get someone.” If you made it half way or the entire video, then I tip my hat off to you lady and gents. Living day to day like that has to be torture in itself. I hope some people went above and beyond going to talk to people while having the simulator in their ears. I tried to have a dialogue with myself, I had to turn it off. Now you can see why it is so difficult for people to live “normal” lifestyles with schizophrenia. With medications and therapy, a regular lifestyle can take place but just look how difficult it can be to maintain. Especially with one or multiple people telling you not to take your medications because its poison. Not just the internal factors but how about external factors. I cant tell you how many times police officers or people who just don’t want to be bothered give people with schizophrenia a hard time. First hand witness of a person with schizophrenic declining of basic life skills is heart breaking. Just imagine one day your loved one is completely fine, waking up to find them hallucinating. You look into their eyes, the souls mirror, and realize this is not the person I know. The video is hoping to make this diagnoses somewhat understandable and realize that it isn’t a choice to hear, see, feels, or smell these things. How hard it is to maintain a lifestyle when the hallucinations are at their worse. In hope that when you see someone struggling you can call the proper authorities to help them get back on track.
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Please watch this video of Cecilia McGough an astrophysicist who discovered she had schizophrenia when she was in high school. She's an amazing woman with many accomplishments because people gave her a shot through empathy.