On October 26, 2016, Georgetown Behavioral Healthcare Institute will host an experiential training event featuring the work of Pat Deagan and the National Empowerment Center Training. During the training period, participants will be placed in the shoes of those who suffer from hearing disturbing voices in an attempt to bring a greater understanding to the issue.
The Voices in Their Heads
For most people suffering from schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations—hearing voices—is a common occurrence. In fact, hearing voices is often one of the main symptoms that doctors use to determine a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Although each person who has schizophrenic auditory hallucinations has a unique experience with the voices, in all cases the voices cause a great degree of discomfort and fear, and can even lead to dangerous behavior.
Patricia Deegan’s training attempts to help medical and law enforcement personnel, who may have frequent interactions with people who may be having schizophrenic auditory hallucinations, as well as friends and family members of people diagnosed with schizophrenia, understand how that person feels, what they are experiencing, and realize just how difficult it is to function when being asked to perform even simple tasks while being bombarded by those voices. Gaining a more thorough understanding of one of the most common outward symptoms of schizophrenia will improve services and care by people in a position of power over those who are most vulnerable.
What Is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia describes a wide array of symptoms that indicate a problem with the brain’s ability to think clearly and logically, understand and process emotion, and behave in appropriate ways. The causes of schizophrenia are not yet known, so treatment is currently focused on reducing the symptoms. Symptoms of schizophrenia are divided into two categories: positive symptoms and negative symptoms.
Positive Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Positive symptoms are so named not because they create a happy outlook or cause positivity in the sufferer but because they are symptoms that are added to the sufferer’s personality. These are symptoms that someone who has schizophrenia did not have before schizophrenic symptoms became manifest. They include:
- Hallucinations, or sensory experiences of things that are not real.
- Delusions, or attachment to a specific thought or idea even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the idea is false or incorrect.
- Issues with speech, where a sufferer will speak in fragmented ways, by garbling words, or by speaking in loose associations that have no logical progression. Also included are neologisms (using made up words), perseveration (repeating the same words or phrases), and clang (nonsense use of rhyming words).
- Motor behavior impairment, where a sufferer will increasingly be unable to perform normal daily tasks or will act in a bizarre manner without inhibition or impulse control.
- Psychosis, where all contact with external reality is lost.
Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Negative symptoms refer to behaviors and thoughts that a sufferer had before becoming schizophrenic but have now been seriously reduced or have become completely absent. Negative symptoms refer, therefore, to things that have been taken away from the person with schizophrenia. These include:
- Reduced facial expressions, where a sufferer’s face becomes hard to read because of any lack of emotional expression.
- Monotone speaking, or speaking in a flat, emotionless tone of voice.
- Lacking eye contact.
- Social withdrawal, where a sufferer will find it too painful or frightening to be with other people and who ceases to care about or be aware of the outside environment.
- Apathy and lethargy, when a sufferer no longer finds any joy in activities that he or she used to find pleasurable.
For the sufferer, the onset of schizophrenic symptoms can be frightening and humiliating. As one of the more common outward symptoms, hearing voices is horribly confusing, and many sufferers associate the onset of this auditory hallucination with fear, shame, guilt, and a feeling of losing control of one’s mind. Too often, admitting to a friend or loved one that they are hearing voices results in being ostracized or feared by others. A person with auditory hallucinations might keep it a secret, and yet, functioning normally in the world while feeling increasingly overwhelmed by the growing hostility and number of the voices in his or her head is difficult at best. Psychosis and auditory hallucinations go hand in hand, where it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish what is real from what is not.
Listening to Disturbing Voices: Experiential Training Event
This valuable training event allows attendees to gain a better understanding of what it is like for people with schizophrenia to try and function in society while dealing with one or more voices talking constantly inside their head. The training puts attendees in the sufferer’s shoes, so to speak. You will be able to listen to a specially designed recording that simulates audible hallucinations while being put through a series of tasks, including “social interaction in the community, a psychiatric interview, cognitive testing, and an activities group in a mock day treatment program.” The experience is followed by a debriefing and discussion session to share what has been learned and develop more valuable insights.
Attendees can expect to gain a better understanding of what a person suffering from audible hallucinations is going through, which will help those who interact with people who suffer from schizophrenia to be more compassionate, patient, and empathetic. This training is extremely valuable for family members and friends of people suffering from schizophrenia, as well as doctors, counselors and therapists, clergy members, police officers, and others who may interact with sufferers even on rare occasions.
The experiential training activity will take place on October 26, 2016, at Georgetown Behavioral Healthcare Hospital, from 9am to 11am. The training will be facilitated by the GBHH staff, with a recorded lecture by Patricia Deegan.
Conclusion
Schizophrenia is a severe chronic disorder that affects how a person behaves, thinks, feels, and acts. Schizophrenia can exhibit both positive and negative symptoms, where positive symptoms refer to symptoms that were not previously part of the person’s personality or experience before schizophrenia (hallucinations, delusions, thought and movement disorders), and negative symptoms refer to symptoms that remove or reduce personality traits or behaviors that the person formerly had (lack of emotion, lack of interest in former hobbies, etc.).
One of the most disturbing symptoms for sufferers of schizophrenia is hallucination, including auditory hallucinations, or hearing voices that no one else can hear. The Listening to Disturbing Voices: Experiential Training event can help attendees learn what it is like to try and perform everyday tasks while hearing the types of voices that are common for schizophrenia sufferers. This experience helps attendees gain more empathy, compassion, and understanding for those who suffer from audible hallucinations.
If you are interested in attending this event, please email Meaghan.escareno@georgetownbehavioral.com to reserve your seat.