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Inside the Mind of a Schizophrenic Through Virtual Reality
blottsie writes Viscira produces videos and technology simulations for the healthcare industry, and the project I tested called "Mindscape" was created for a pharmaceutical company that wanted to give potential clients insight into what some schizophrenic patients might feel like in a real-life scenario. Unlike audio tests or videos that show you a first-person perspective of schizophrenic experiences, Viscira's demonstration uses the Oculus Rift headset and is entirely immersive. You can look around at each individual's face, and up and down the hallway. Walk through the elevator, and hear voices that appear to be coming from both strangers and your own head.
In the sense that a virtual reality that you can enter and exit any time you like is not going to be the same, I agree. Indeed, having to actually live with the experience, as opposed to temporarily subjecting yourself to it is the real issue.
That said, anything that allows non-schizophrenic people to experience the same sort of inputs will be useful towards understanding.
It would be good to have an actual schizophrenic use the product and confirm if this is even remotely similar to what they really experience. Until then, its just what some think their experience is.
Come up with a way you think you could test this and publish it somewhere. What measurable thing would exist in that case but not if it were untrue?
If schizophrenic people just had stronger or "extra" perceptions, that hypothesis could be tested:
1. If several were in the same place, they should all perceive the same extra sensory occurrences at the same time.
2. The extra information would likely be useful, so schizophrenic people would be more successful.
3. There is no reason that the extra information should distort their interpretation of "normal" reality in harmful ways, just add to it.
None of these are true.
Those psychomimetic effects aren't necessarily interpreted as a "bad trip".
Many people with schizophrenia don't consider it a "bad trip" either. By the time they are diagnosed, many of them have already lost their friends, alienated their families, have no job, and little hope of having a meaningful life. For them, reality is shit. But inside their their own mind, they are the king of the world. So why should they go through the effort of conscientiously taking medication that converts them from a king to a lonely homeless loser? This is something that makes treating schizophrenia difficult: treatment makes things get worse, sometimes much worse, before things get better. It is explained in the book The Seduction of Madness.