After a week of relearning the developmental and abnormal psychology I learned in high school and college, I am once again reminded that brains are amazing. I studied neuroscience in undergrad, so I knew that already, but actually getting to see interviews with real patients made me understand it in a new way. I've known people with anxiety disorders and depression and bipolar disorder and eating disorders, but I'd never really spent much time talking about what it was like for them. You can't say to a friend over dinner, "Say, you have problems with mental illness. How exactly does your brain work?" Well, you can. But you shouldn't.
I'd never known anyone with true OCD, though. Not OCD in the way that most people mean when they say they're obsessive-compulsive. I always double-check that my keys are in my purse, even though I know I just put them in there. And I like colored pencils to be in rainbow order. Someone who genuinely struggles with OCD will tell you that's nothing.
Schizophrenia is also very interesting to see. Watching a movie or a TV show with a mentally ill character is not the same as being in the same room as someone who really believes their delusions are true. And you can't convince them otherwise. How could you? Someone would have a hard time convincing me that I'm actually dairy maid who only thinks she's in med school, because I know I'm in med school. I'm certain of it. People can be just as certain of their delusions.
Brains can distort reality and create fantasies in a gazillion different ways, and yet patterns still emerge. The amazing Oliver Sacks has earned a ton of money and a huge fan following because of it. I've always enjoyed Sacks, because his vignettes tell the stories of complete people, not just a mental condition. You're not paying a penny to see the lunatics in Bedlam, you're learning about the life of someone whose brain doesn't always work the way yours does. A similar work is Phantoms in the Brain, which doesn't focus exclusively on what we might consider mental illness, but rather the way the brain can err or be tricked, both in normal people and in people who have a particular condition. I wish I had time to read more books like this, but I don't really have the time to read much of anything besides course materials anymore.
I'd never known anyone with true OCD, though. Not OCD in the way that most people mean when they say they're obsessive-compulsive. I always double-check that my keys are in my purse, even though I know I just put them in there. And I like colored pencils to be in rainbow order. Someone who genuinely struggles with OCD will tell you that's nothing.
Schizophrenia is also very interesting to see. Watching a movie or a TV show with a mentally ill character is not the same as being in the same room as someone who really believes their delusions are true. And you can't convince them otherwise. How could you? Someone would have a hard time convincing me that I'm actually dairy maid who only thinks she's in med school, because I know I'm in med school. I'm certain of it. People can be just as certain of their delusions.
Brains can distort reality and create fantasies in a gazillion different ways, and yet patterns still emerge. The amazing Oliver Sacks has earned a ton of money and a huge fan following because of it. I've always enjoyed Sacks, because his vignettes tell the stories of complete people, not just a mental condition. You're not paying a penny to see the lunatics in Bedlam, you're learning about the life of someone whose brain doesn't always work the way yours does. A similar work is Phantoms in the Brain, which doesn't focus exclusively on what we might consider mental illness, but rather the way the brain can err or be tricked, both in normal people and in people who have a particular condition. I wish I had time to read more books like this, but I don't really have the time to read much of anything besides course materials anymore.
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