To all appearances, Eleanor Longden was just like every other student, heading to college full of promise and without a care in the world. That was until the voices in her head started talking. Initially innocuous, these internal narrators became increasingly antagonistic and dictatorial, turning her life into a living nightmare. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, hospitalized, drugged, Longden was discarded by a system that didn’t know how to help her. Longden tells the moving tale of her years-long journey back to mental health, and makes the case that it was through learning to listen to her voices that she was able to survive.
Eleanor Longden overcame her diagnosis of schizophrenia to earn a master’s in psychology and demonstrate that the voices in her head were “a sane reaction to insane circumstances.”
Professor Robert Sapolsky finishes his lecture on language and then dives into his discussion about schizophrenia. He discusses environmental factors as well as genetic characteristics that could apply to people who are affected. He describes schizophrenia as a disease of thought disorder and inappropriate emotional attributes. [quoted from the description box beneath the video]
Consciousness could occur at the fundamental level of spacetime geometry when the brain stops being perfused. It doesn’t dissipate but remains together by entanglement. So an individual’s personality, consciousness, memory, soul if you will, could be entangled in a quantum sense and persist as fluctuations in the time scale of the universe. ~Dr. Stuart Hameroff
[A]sk the question is consciousness a continuum or is it a sequence of discrete events? I think there’s a lot of evidence that consciousness is a sequence of discrete events. It appears continuous but just like if we see a movie or a video it appears continuous but it’s actually a sequence of discrete frames. I think consciousness is also a sequence of discrete frames. ~Dr. Stuart Hameroff
What do you think? And how do you think this effects psychology, psychiatry/psychotherapy and mental health?
You’re mind is working at its best when you’re being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity. ~Banksy, “Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall”
In the early 1990s, PBS televised a series called Madness that was hosted by Jonathan Miller. The premise of the show was to document and to examine the history of people suffering from mental illness. The following two-part video was featured on the show, however, the original video seems to be from the 70s according to what little else I could research on the internet regarding Gerald S.
Gerald S. gives us an accurate and poignant peek into someone who has schizophrenia and how the mind works and processes the external world, which is perceived unfiltered (which explains Gerald’s seemingly incoherent and disorganized speech). Current research is discovering more about this serious mental illness (among others), as well as, better ways to treat those who suffer from serious mental illness and to remove the stigma attached to it.
Melvin has ShizoAffective Disorder. Melvin has no socially constructed ego.
This experiemental, ambient piece depicts the ups and downs, the good days and bad days, the moments when Melvin is “okay” and those moments when Melvin is going through hell. It’s syncopation follows the daily “schizo” moments wherein madness seems to overwhelm the entirety of Melvin’s consciousness and awareness and also those moments of beauty and tranquility wherein the whole of being becomes filled with peace of mind.
This is Melvin’s daily lifestory. Melvin is fine one moment, and in complete madness the next, then after too much of society’s false conventions, platitudes, consumerisms, materialisms, pseudo-complexities, bureaucracies, frivolous and superfluous laws, governments, neuromarketed ego need for shopping and other illusions and imaginary things, for too long, Melvin becomes shell shocked and unable to function. . . like a thousand yard stare.
This Melvin’s dis-ease, this is Melvin’s life. Hit PLAY.
Melvin is a term of endearment given to me by my boyfriend, Stephen. So, this one is personal.
Credits–
[Clips used from the following footage. Some used with permission of CC license and others available in the public domain]:
“Sand City” by Don Whitaker
“sometimes i want to be a monk” from Daniel J Alex
“War Neuroses — Netley Hospital, 1917″ by Wellcome Film
“chicago beach” from doctorfaustroll
“American Look (Part I) 1958″ produced by Handy (Jam) Organization
“The Samaritans – Scream” from HallofAdvertising
“Platinum Fashion Mall, Petchburi Road, Bangkok” from Guido Vanhaleweyk
Image Credit (available through public record from the National Archives):
“Thousand Yard Stare” from The National Archives
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