Hi Jim: I am not that knowledgeable other than that when I teach intro I try to dispel myths about all the content areas of psych. So I have no direct experience, which is true of everything I teach in intro psych, other than narrow research areas in human memory and college student education.
I find the biggest schizophrenia misrepresentation in the media is that hallucinations are primarily visual. As I understand it the hallucinations in schizophrenia are primarily auditory. Visual are far less frequent, if not downright rare, as are olfactory, gustatory and tactile hallucinations. In fact, as far as I know visual hallucinations occur primarily for two reasons: drug effects, such as hallucinogens, and tumors or other insults directly to brain areas (not sure specifically which areas). The media error arises because it is difficult to "portray" voices that are only heard by the person. As seen in a Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard took what were auditory hallucinations in the original book and turned it into visual images to portray on the screen. That is more typical. Also, some people with schizophrenia self-medicate with street drugs that do cause visual hallucinations. The other error I find is the portrayal of something that hints more of multiple personality disorder than of schizophrenia. If you google schizophrenia movies you will also find included in there movies such as Three Faces of Eve. Finally, movies seldom show the real day-to-day life of someone who is taking their meds, actively getting supportive therapy (I hate to call it therapy as it is more general supportive counseling), and is struggling but getting by, is marginally able to be self-sufficient and functional and live independently. We take for granted how much where-with-all this takes! Many live in small group homes and support each other. Few have families who can sustain a life time of being supportive. So there are lots of themes out there that we seldom see in the movies because frankly, these story lines are not jazzy or sexy. Maybe your writer friend could find one of these small group homes or half-way houses and volunteer for a while. It seems to me that some first-hand experience would benefit a writer more than would researching things second-hand. (But what do I know, I only write research papers or encyclopedias; very boring stuff.) Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110-2492 tay...@sandiego.edu ________________________________________ Subject: Fwd: Media representations of schizophrenia? From: Jim Clark <j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca> Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 04:04:15 +0000 X-Message-Number: 1 > Hi > > A playwrite mother of my son's friend is writing a play about schizophrenia. > I'm curious what people knowledgeable about the disorder find to be the main > misrepresentations in the media? > > Thanks > Jim > > Sent from my iPhone --- END OF DIGEST --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: tay...@sandiego.edu To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a21b0&n=T&l=tips&o=38141 or send a blank email to leave-38141-13534.4204dc3a11678c6b1d0be57cfe0a2...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=38144 or send a blank email to leave-38144-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
