- Schizophrenia simulation is the top search
on YouTube related to schizophrenia.
Clearly, people want to know what it's like
to experience schizophrenia,
but what you don't realize
is that you've already experienced psychosis yourself.
(soft music)
Hi, and welcome back
to the Living Well With Schizophrenia channel.
My name is Lauren and I make videos about what it's like
to live with Schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia.
If you would like to see more videos like this one,
please make sure to subscribe to our channel,
and if you would like to help support
the creation of our videos like this,
please make sure to check out our Patreon page.
The link is in the description below.
Any support is really, really appreciated.
Thank you.
Now, we've reviewed and reacted to simulation videos
in the past, and we'll link to that below.
And while those simulation videos have some merit,
they largely feel overdramatized,
and most importantly, don't actually convey
to the viewer what the actual feeling
of a psychotic episode is like.
This is partly because of the fact that,
schizophrenia is fairly complex
in terms of encompassing different types
of symptoms beyond just hallucinations.
The simulation concept that we are going to present
also does not fully encompass
all of the symptoms of schizophrenia,
but we feel that it is the closest possible way
to help someone understand what schizophrenia can feel like
to an individual experiencing it.
So we were watching a masterclass on sleep by Matt Walker,
who is a neuroscientist specializing in sleep.
As we've mentioned before on this channel,
sleep is such an important part of helping
to manage an illness like schizophrenia.
Matt's masterclass on sleep was such a great overview
of the current scientific understanding of sleep,
and full of practical tips on improving sleep.
We'll leave a link to the class in the description below.
Anyways, in that masterclass,
he brought up how dreaming is essentially a psychotic state.
So he described people in the REM cycle or dream state
as being flagrantly psychotic,
and experiencing what he called nighttime psychosis.
Now, this was for a variety of different reasons,
but the first one being that, when you are dreaming,
you are seeing things that aren't actually there.
So you are essentially hallucinating.
The second being that, when you are dreaming,
you believe things that couldn't possibly be true.
So you are essentially delusional.
And number three is that,
you become confused about time, place, and person,
which is essentially disorientation.
Number four is that you have wildly fluctuating emotions,
and this is something that psychiatrist term
as being affectively labile.
And number five, is that you usually wake up
and forget most of the dream experience.
So you were essentially experiencing a form of amnesia.
So just like schizophrenia is defined
as a break from reality,
dreaming two is literally a break from reality.
What you were experiencing during a dream is not real,
and is not what others around you are experiencing,
but it feels very real to you.
In fact, brain scans have shown that brain activity
while dreaming is almost indistinguishable
from what regular brain activity looks like
while an individual is awake,
which can kind of help to explain dreams feel so real
to the person experiencing them.
So what an individual experiences while in psychosis
also feels very real to them.
So why does all of this matter?
So first of all, this was a really incredible analogy,
and it immediately made us think about
how we've all experienced simulations of,
what it's like to hallucinate and have delusions.
So think about your own dreams that you've experienced
and how real they can seem.
You've probably had dreams where you see and interact
with other people, and you can distinctly hear their voices
and communicate with them.
You've probably had dreams where you were delusional.
Maybe you thought you could fly
or you believed you were a celebrity or had super powers.
We've all had these vivid kind of wild dreams.
And we've all had bad dreams too.
Dreams where we were afraid of what was happening,
felt scared or lost, or maybe the things that in hindsight
don't make complete sense or aren't in line
with how we would normally conduct ourselves.
So, with this comparison of dreaming being like
being in psychosis, there are definitely some limitations,
and like all comparisons, the analogy of dreaming
to schizophrenia simulations has its limitations.
So the first one being that, in this analogy
there is kind of a lack of negative symptoms.
So negative symptoms, we've done a video on this,
and you can check that out here,
but basically negative symptoms
are the removal of some sort of behavior.
So generally speaking, it's a lack of motivation,
a lack of energy, more of kind of a depressed mood or state.
And dreaming doesn't...
Typically you don't experience that so much in dreaming,
but that is a big part of what schizophrenia entails.
So that's a limitation of this analogy.
Also the experience of hearing negative voices
isn't something that's really depicted
in the dream state.
You don't typically hear voices that you can't see
and interact with and whatnot,
but that is something that happens quite frequently
with people who are experiencing
the schizophrenia or psychosis.
Also the fact that you can wake up from dreams,
whereas you don't really have that option
when it comes to psychosis.
There are ways to treat and manage it that can help you
get out of the psychotic state,
but you can't just wake up and have it,
be over and back to normal sort of thing.
Also, most people do not experience schizophrenia
as just this continuous state of psychosis
like being in a dream state.
There are periods where the psychosis is maybe more intense,
such as full psychotic episodes,
and medications and treatments can also help to reduce
the frequency and severity of psychosis.
Also, a big one that we wanted to draw your attention
to is that there is no stigma around dreaming.
And this could serve to explain why the experience
of psychosis tends to be a more negative one
for people experiencing it than dreams tend to be.
It is also far more acceptable to share your dreams
with other people than it is to talk
about your experiences while psychotic,
making dreams more of a comfortable
and acceptable experience than being in psychosis.
So beyond this, we just wanna share with you
some more thoughts that had
about the connection between the experience of psychosis
with the experience of dreaming.
So often people who have schizophrenia
belief that they do not have any mental illness,
which is a concept termed anosognosia,
which we have a video about that you can check out here,
which is one reason why they stopped
taking medication sometimes.
When you're dreaming,
it's really difficult to know that you're dreaming,
and this is kind of a similar concept.
Also, just like people are unique,
are dreams are also unique, which is why delusions
and hallucinations differ from person to person.
So, most schizophrenia simulations out there,
kind of tend to center around
the exaggerated special effects,
and we just didn't really feel that this really helps people
to understand what the experience of schizophrenia
or psychosis is actually like.
So relating the experience of psychosis
to the a really universal experience of dreaming
was really the best and most accessible simulation
we could come up with to help people
kinda better understand what it may actually feel like
for someone who is experiencing psychosis.
So, the next time you wake up from a strong dream,
think about how real it felt for you,
and how emotion driven it was against rationality.
And hopefully this helps you to kind of empathize
with what psychosis can feel like
for a person who is going through it.
So thank you so much for watching this video.
I hope that it was helpful or insightful in some way
in terms of giving you a better understanding
of what the experience
of schizophrenia or psychosis might be like
to someone who is experiencing it.
So again, if you wanna see more videos like this one,
make sure to subscribe to our channel.
And also, if you would like to help support
the creation of videos like this one,
please make sure to check out the link to our Patreon page.
Thank you so much again for watching, and as always,
wishing you and your loved ones, good health.
See you in the next video, bye.