Workshop Participants Try Schizophrenia for a Day

Trying to simulate the experience of someone suffering from a mental illness, especially schizophrenia, poses many difficulties. However, the Montgomery County chapter of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, attempted to do just that by hosting the Hearing Voices program last month.

Officer Joan Logan of the Montgomery County Police Department's Crisis Intervention Team led the program, which exposed participants to recorded voices in order to simulate the experience of hearing voices, and to explore how people with this mental illness cope. Many of the participants had friends and family members who suffer from schizophrenia, and this seemed like a unique opportunity.

We received MP3 players loaded with recordings of various voices that we were to listen to while maneuvering around the room participating in activities. The voices on my MP3 player started as a cacophony of low, guttural and mostly incoherent mumbling. If this had been the only sound, it might have been possible to tune it out after some period of time. However, more coherent and distinct voices piped in after a few minutes, making the experience much more disturbing. In particular, an angry male voice began a profanity laden and denigrating tirade filled with personal insults. Like an unrelenting bully, this berating voice emphasized negativity. While we listened, we moved to different stations to get an idea of how the voices would affect our thinking. The first task involved a reading comprehension exercise in which we had to read an article and then answer 10 questions about the content. Most people, including myself, were upset at being able to correctly answer only five questions.

The next activity involved a simulated intake interview, during which a volunteer posing as a somewhat detached health care provider asked a series of questions, some personal and others requiring comprehension. In one question, the volunteer provided a series of options and then asked a question based on the options. I felt embarrassed and frustrated when I could not recall a list of options presented to me just moments earlier. It seemed impossible to fully comprehend all the questions while trying to cope with the uncontrollable voices I was hearing.

Recreational activities were at the last station. The crossword puzzles I was given were easy enough that the voices didn't distract me too much and keep me from completing them. But like others in the group, I found that writing out possible solutions or talking to myself helped organize my thoughts while being bombarded with angry voices. After this experience, I now understand why many people who hear voices speak to themselves.

Other puzzles consisted of manipulating geometric arrangements of toothpicks. I found these puzzles more difficult because the voices adversely affected my ability to visualize patterns. While I started to enjoy the puzzles during times when the voices subsided, I also felt that the voices reduced a simple but mentally stimulating activity into an exercise in frustration. I wasn't the only one who simply gave up on certain puzzles partly because it was impossible to focus or relax and enjoy the activity.

After we finally shut off the MP3 players, I felt mentally exhausted, as did others in the group. As we discussed our reactions, some people even reported feeling nauseous. Most of us expressed feelings of confusion, frustration and disorientation.

As part of the discussion, Officer Logan noted that some elements of the exercise were somewhat artificial. First, the recordings contained more varied voices than most people who hear voices typically experience. The fact that we knew we were going to be hearing the voices for only a short period also affected our coping mechanisms.

For those who hear voices, maintaining any capacity to ignore them likely would be difficult without support from family members and mental health professionals. Additionally, the voices we heard were in our ears, while people who hear voices, we were told, often perceive them as coming from outside their head.

I have a new perspective on mental illness. NAMI Montgomery County's presentation of this program gave me the opportunity to begin to get a sense of what it must be like to hear voices. I certainly left with a greater appreciation for the daily struggles that people suffering from mental illnesses must endure.

Most people don't understand what it's like to live with a mental illness. NAMI Montgomery County, the local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, recently sponsored a workshop offering people a chance to simulate the experiences of a person with schizophrenia. Last month, 30 people, including mental health professionals and individuals with mentally ill family members, participated in the Hearing Voices program. Christopher M. Griffin, 31, a software engineer who lives in Rockville, signed up because he has a family member with mental illness and a friend with schizophrenia. Griffin, who is a member of NAMI Montgomery County, writes about the impact of the workshop. For information about the organization, go tohttp://www.namimc.org.