Before watching the video, I think that TV shows that follow the lives of people with mental health issue can be exploitative, if they do not choose themselves to be documented. For example, in Intervention, a lot of the time, the family of the person with issue are the ones who choose to document the life of them. That is exploitative. So as long as people are choosing to be documented, then it is okay to film them for entertainment.

After watching the video, none of my opinions really change. You could visibly see how upset the guy was about his stuff being gone through, so in my mind its really unfair for them to be filming him.

The comments of the video were really rude and often not even about the show or the purpose behind the show. Potentially, the show could be used to communicate facts about real mental issue to a wide audience but since they are used for entertainment purposes, people often time focus on the superficial, such as the appearances of the people.

Schizophrenia is more or less fantasized in the media in my opinion. After watching the video and comparing it with what I have seen in movies that portray what the symptoms are like, I see a big difference in the advancement of symptoms. The movies make every case seem to be the worse case scenario and does not allow the lesser cases much exposure. The media has a bad case of dramatizing the effects and portrays the disease in its worse sense to get more attention. The YouTube video seemed to make the effects more personal and put you in an everyday situation. This allowed you to sympathize with the individual and allowed me to completely understand the effects of the disease. I feel as though the YouTube video was more effective than the media and movies at portraying the actual effects of the disease.

This week we were asked to watch a video showing a day from the perspective of someone who has schizophrenia and share our reactions. I certainly sympathize with those who go through what is represented in the video, it must be very scary and confusing. It makes me wonder if all people who have schizophrenia experience something similar to that, and if not what they do experience. I also wonder the effect that familiar faces and loved ones would have. The video showed (I assume his wife?) at the end and she seemed to help him but it wasn’t clear whether it was because she was familiar and loved or if it was just because she distracted him from his thoughts. I did not know that those who suffer from schizophrenia can see food as poison like the man in the video did. I appreciate more now how difficult very simple everyday things become for those who have schizophrenia. In all this video was not very different from how I have thought of schizophrenia being based on what I have seen about it in the media. I think the media makes people who have schizophrenia seem more crazy than most with schizophrenia actually are by portraying characters who have schizophrenia as more actively peculiar. By this I simply mean that it seems like they portray schizophrenics as always acting strangely rather than just having things going on in their head like the video showed. Donnie Darko seemed a little more surreal than I would think the majority of schizophrenics would be, however I simply don’t know. It certainly was more so than the video, but still quite similar in some respects. In all it doesn’t seem like my view or knowledge of schizophrenia has changed much after watching that video, as it didn’t seem to differ much from what I have seen in the media with regard to schizophrenia. However I have more appreciation of the difficulties schizophrenia presents in everyday life.

This week in class we have been talking about mental health. For this blog prompt I decided to watch the YouTube video demonstrating the daily life of a patient suffering from schizophrenia. Before starting the video I was afraid of what I would see and I felt uncomfortable as I watched the progression of the video. The most uncomfortable part of the video was hearing the background voices and seeing how it affected the daily life of the man. It made me sad to see that these patients have trouble performing simple daily activities such as taking medications, answering the phone, and watching television. It was so disturbing to experience how these patients are controlled by the voices they hear,and the darkness throughout the video made me feel the anxiety that the person in the video was experiencing. Towards the end of the video the experiences seemed to become very personal, and I felt as if the voices were directed towards me.

The media often portrays different mental health related disorders in an extravagant way. I feel like the media often depicts schizophrenics as people that have no self control, and that these people are extremely dangerous. It is hurtful to see that the media shows these false sides to these important health issues. The media should work to inform the public about these health issues in order to teach people about a disorder that not most people know about. The media takes a toll on the way we view this mental health disorder because it depicts schizophrenics as crazy people that are scary and have no way of controlling their emotions.

The YouTube video made me see schizophrenia in a more personal way that allowed me to feel the anxiety that these people face on a daily basis. I think it is important to fully comprehend a topic before displaying it in the media, and I feel like it is wrong to depict it in false ,extravagant ways just to get more views from the public; even though that might not be the primary intention. It is important to teach people about this topic instead of scaring them and allowing them to think that there is no way of helping these patients.

The video I watched about Schizophrenia was a good video that shows how people act when experiencing this disorder. I was shocked when the person was having difficulty to do tasks around the house.This type of video and the media videos such as movies or tv shows which show Schizophrenia use this to make the movies to be dramatic,suspenseful or unpredictable. The voices in the head of the person were manipulating the decision this person was making.When the person saw the pizza man at the door there was a sense of suspense and when the person got the pizza to look at it the person saw the pizza was making noises and moving so the person just threw it on the ground. A person with schizophrenia has a mental disorder that involves the thoughts,emotion, and behavior leading to how a person sees the reality by doing unusual things that a normal person doesn’t regularly do.There’s medication which helps people dealing with Schizophrenia to help people be able to live normal. The media these days shows good ways of Schizophrenia by showing people how this disorder affects a person’s life and the struggles they have to go through in everyday life.

I watched the youtube video that simulated the experience of a person diagnosed schizophrenia. Let me begin by saying that watching the video was an alarming yet eye-opening experience. The effect of the video, for me, was largely due to it being in a first-person perspective. At some points in the video, I found myself feeling suspenseful of what was about to happen next. From the first-person perspective, the voices that were being heard in the person’s head started to feel real to me. It disturbed me how the person had so much trouble with basic tasks of answering the phone and getting a pizza from the door. Furthermore, I found it interesting that the person with schizophrenia did not say anything to the person that came in at the end of the video. Often, the media dramatizes disorders such as schizophrenia for effect. Movies and tv shows depict people with extreme cases of schizophrenia to keep the audience engaged. This video did a good job at keeping it moderate which, for me, made it more relatable. I think its unsettling how the media protrays people with schizophrenia because it makes it seem as if these people cannot be treated. The video, however, showed the perspective of a schizophrenia patient with and without treatment and the difference was noticable. From the video, I gained a greater understanding of the challeneges schizophrenics face that most people would see as normal every-day tasks. I would encourage others to watch the video in hopes that they have a similar experience.

After watching the simulation schizophrenia video, I was shocked to see that some people undergo so much stress in their daily lives. Simple activities that I take for granted are an obstacle. Before watching the video I was honestly scared what would be shown and how I would handle it. During the video, I felt uncomfortable and uneasy, I tried to immerse myself as much as I could to really gain that feeling if I was experiencing these things in real life. I felt a sense of paranoia from the voices in the background and overall didn’t like the mental atmosphere that was portrayed.

In the media schizophrenia is portrayed as crazy and incapable of self control. I don’t that the media portrays schizophrenia correctly because these people undergo so much in their daily lives with simple activities that it’s hard for them to have touch with reality and essentially know what is real and what is not real. I don’t believe that these people are crazy in the slightest, their reality is altered and each person who has this mental problem has different ways of dealing with it, the way that they deal with it could come off as uncontrolled or crazy to someone who is uninformed about schizophrenia. Overall, I think that the media should do a better job showing the true side of people with schizophrenia because it is nothing like the way that they are showing it now.

We often see schizophrenia to be depicted in the media as horror-related. For this week, I watched a schizophrenia simulation, and it was my first time watching a schizophrenia simulation. The simulation did not really feel like a scene from a horror movie to me because it depicted a more realistic experience of a schizophrenic patient and was not made for the purpose of entertainment. For example, the voices in the person’s head were normal voices instead of deep and creepy whispers that are often portrayed in horror movies. The simulation, however, did make me feel nervous and anxious while I was watching it. I was able to know more of what it is like inside a schizophrenic person’s head, in terms of what they see and hear.

Schizophrenia is usually depicted as scary in the media. My previous exposure to schizophrenia only includes creating a short film with several friends for a humanities course in high school. From that project, I have always seen schizophrenic patients as very traumatized and lonely. This particular simulation, however, did not really show the emotions and feelings of the patient. Although the simulation and media portrayals are similar in showing the frightening aspects of schizophrenia, the simulation gave a more personal perspective, in which we can feel the anxiety of the person. Because the simulation was a video, I was not able to fully experience other aspects that a schizophrenic patient experiences, such as smells and feelings.

This week in Psychology, we were given a video to watch, which simulated what having a psychotic episode as a schizophrenic patient would be like:

Often, in the media especially, schizophrenia is depicted as someone who has no control whatsoever of their life.  In movies, schizophrenics are viewed as the abnormal ones, either being portrayed as a “crazy” person or as someone who has potential to succeed, but is too blinded by their never-ending hallucinations and daydreams.  This exaggerated view of schizophrenics, however, is far from reality.  As the video showed, people with this mental illness can absolutely live “normal”, healthy lives.  Just like with any mental illness, some days are worse than others and staying regulated on their prescribed medication will help patients with these daily struggles.  People with schizophrenia are often depicted in a way which makes people almost scared of their disorder or worried of how they will function in society.  When in fact, people will this disorder can certainly live long, healthy lives, when on the proper medication and with daily routines.  The media often exaggerates issues or things in the public eye in order to grab anyone’s attention.  This ultimately casts a negative shadow on these misunderstood and feared disorders, like schizophrenia.  Simulations, however, like the one in this video, begin to help people understand the experiences schizophrenic patients go through every day.  They have struggles, just like the rest of us and the more we can understand each other’s pain, the more we can begin to heal it.

I, personally, am not interested in these types of shows because of how they exploit people’s behavior. Some seem to demonstrate their actions not because they actually have an issue, but because they want the attention of being on television. However, others actually do suffer from a mental illness. I have mixed feelings about these shows because in some aspects, they can be an eye-opener to people but only if they are shown in the appropriate way. The ethnics are essentially there considering the person has to O.K. for them to be shown on television, however, it does raise concern about the effectiveness of their treatment to actually get better since it exploits their disorder on a T.V. show. After watching the TLC clip “Inside Hoarding: Cleaning Up For Love | Hoarding: Buried Alive”, my thoughts and comments still remain the same. It is sad to see a person exploited for whatever struggles they may be going through, especially so because someone from the outside may not understand what is going through that individual’s mind or what issues they may be dealing with. Shows like these exploit individuals and expose them to a lot of ridicule without any chance to acknowledge their side of the story in order to get them actual help.