This article is about two women diagnosed with schizophrenia who faced their mental illness and succeeded in adapting their life to their pathologies. Before telling their stories we will explain you in a few sentences what is schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental illness which shows some positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms refer to auditory or visual hallucinations most of the time, some delusions like megalomania, persecution, insertion of the thoughts or paranoiac, interpretation. Negative symptoms encompass the loss of emotional expression characterized by a decreased of : facial emotional expression, motivation for action (social and professional), the will and an inability to feel pleasure from positive stimulations.
Saks the first woman, hold a TED Talks on June 2012. A legal scholar, in 2007 Saks came forward with her own story of schizophrenia, controlled by drugs and therapy but ever-present. In this powerful talk, she asks us to see people with mental illness clearly, honestly and compassionately.
Saks spent a hundred days in psychiatric hospitals she’s a chaired professor of law psychology and psychiatry at the USC Gould School of law. She graduated from Yale University which is one of the famous law university all other the world. The story she’s telling is a tale of her schizophrenia experience.
” I opened the door of my studio apartment Steve would later tell me that, for all the times he had seen me psychotic, nothing could have prepared him for what he saw that day. For a week or more, I had barely eaten. I was gaunt. I walked as though my legs were wooden. My face looked and felt like a mask. I had closed all the curtains in the apartment, so in the middle of the day, the apartment was in near total darkness. The air was fetid, the room a shambles. (Steve a lawyer and a psychologist enter in the room) Hi! I said, and then I returned to the couch, where I sat in silence for several moments. Thank you for coming Steve (Crumbling world, word, voice). Tell the clocks to stop. Time is. Time has come. White is leaving Steve said somberly. I’m being pushed into a grave. The situation is grave, I moan, Gravity is pulling me down. I’m scared! tell them to get away “
Her friends and her husband were a good support. After several journeys in psychiatric hospitals she get back to work and one day an episode of loss of association lead her back to the hospital in an involuntary hospitalisation which has been made by force “lifted me high into the air and slammed me down on a metal bed with such force that I saw stars then they strapped my legs and arms to the metal bed with thick leather straps”.
Elyn Saks, warn us about the “restraints” every day we estimated that one to three people die in restraints due to suffocation strangle aspirate their vomit, they have a heart attack. She thinks “forces” is not a good treatment with people who suffer from a tremendous illness. She first said her treatment was effective (4-5 days a week therapy or psychoanalysis). Second, her friends who know this illness gave her a meaning to continue to live. Third, her job is very stimulating and occupied her thoughts with complex problems which help her not to think about the voices. Her job was definitely the most powerful defence against her mental illness.
Eleanor Longden give a TED Talks on February 2013. To all appearances, she has been just like every other student until she was exposed to voices in her head. The onset of symptoms happened on the second semester of university, at first voices described all she was doing “She is leaving the room”, “she is opening the door”, “she is going to the library”. And gradually, the voices became companionate and reassuring, sometimes a mirror of the emotions she was hiding like anger. Then, the most difficult thing was not the voices, but how she was treated after telling others she had them. It was her “first mistake” telling her friends about those voices and a second mistake telling her general practitioner. This triggered a stigmatization and everything she said was subsequently interpreted through a filter of latent insanity. The fact that voices were seen like a symptom altered them into aggressive, hostile and menacing one. Two years later, she presented a cluster of symptoms like terrifying voices, grotesque visions, bizarre, intractable delusions.
Longden faced the difficulties of a person diagnosed with schizophrenia, also different institution couldn’t help her. Her entourage like her doctor or her mother empowered her to save herself
Eleanor was able to survive thanks to her voices in her head, after learning to listen and separate them out a metaphorical meaning.
“My voices were a meaningful response to traumatic life events, particularly childhood events, and as such were not my enemies, but a source of insight into solvable emotional problems”
The voices were a response to deep emotion and memories: sexual trauma and abuse, shame, anger, guilt, low self-worth. For example, when the voices warned her not to leave the house, she thanked them for drawing her attention to how unsafe she felt. Then, she could do something positive about it. Ten years after the acute phase, Eleanor graduated in psychology and developed her own conception of psychiatry: “an important question in psychiatry shouldn’t be what’s wrong with you but rather what happened to you”. Now, Eleanor is a part of the International Hearing Voices Movement inspired by the work of Professor Marius Romme and Dr Sandra Escher which analyse voices like a survival strategy.
Finally, we want you to be the spearhead of the change in the conception of the schizophrenic illness. Moreover, voices are not a symptom of schizophrenia, but a sane reaction to insane circumstances. We want you to share the story of these two women who fight against schizophrenia stigmas. They are the perfect example of sublimation. The smart people have the most persuasive demons. Moreover, their stories showed the importance of listening to ourselves and our emotion and not hiding them.
Words we have learned :
shattered = brisé
barely = à peine
gaunt = décharné
as my legs were wooden = comme si mes jambe étaient en bois
somberly = sombrement
curtains = rideaux
shambles = pagaille
Crumbling = effritement
menial jobs = travaux subalternes
enact that “grave” prognosis = donner de la force à ce pronostic “grave”
hallmarks = poinçons
delusions = délire
brimming = débordant
gleefully = avec jubilation
traffic cone theft = vol de cône de circulation
feisty = fougueux(Bagarreur)
albeit = quoique
fumbling = en cafouillant
duly = dûment
G.P. : general practitioner = médecin généraliste
swung round = faire volte-face
a grim view = une vue sinistre
frenzied = frénétique
to drill = percer
wreckage = épave, débris
clutching = en serrant
Geoffrey GUILLON and Elisa BEAUGEARD