Schizophrenia

We were told to create a short 1 minute scene based around a mental health issue. Our scene was a 1 minute physical theatre piece that was accompanied by a short repeated phrase from a poem we read in the lesson. In my physical theatre sequence, my character was hearing voices in his head and was desperately trying to physically push them away from him. After this, he started to gradually rock back and forth while holding his ears as the voices were becoming very loud and were very frustrating. The mental health issue that I related my piece to was Schizophrenia. I decided to research Schizophrenia in order to develop my understanding and knowledge of it in order to accurately portray a character suffering from it. I wanted to know how my character would be affected by it, both physically and mentally. I went to a website about Schizophrenia to discover some facts about it. Some of the links to the websites I visited include: 

https://www.rethink.org/diagnosis-treatment/conditions/schizophrenia.  

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Schizophrenia/Pages/Introduction.aspx.

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsdisorders/schizophrenia.aspx. 

Some facts I found out were:

• Schizophrenia is a mental illness that affects the way you think.

• It affects about 1 in every 100 people.

• It usually starts during early adulthood.

• It does not mean that you have a split personality or that you are likely to be violent.

• The symptoms of schizophrenia can be split into ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ symptoms.

• Positive symptoms include experiencing things that are not real (hallucinations) and having unusual beliefs (delusions)

• Negative symptoms include lack of motivation and becoming withdrawn. These symptoms are generally more long-lasting.

• Many different factors seem to affect whether you develop schizophrenia.

• Medication known and therapy can help treat symptoms of schizophrenia.

I decided to research it further to learn about the physical effects of Schizophrenia. I found out that the symptoms include hallucinations, changes in behaviour, delusions, disorganised thinking,  lack of motivation, slow movement, change in sleep patterns, poor grooming or hygiene, difficulty in planning and setting goals, not saying much, changes in body language, lack of eye contact, reduced range of emotions, less interest in socialising or hobbies and activities, and low sex drive.

I think that the symptom that relates to my character during the scene is hallucinations. Hallucinations are the experiences that are not real or that other people do not experience. They can affect all of your senses including visual (sight), tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste) and auditory (sound). I thought about how this would affect my character as he wouldn’t be able to know what was real and what was imaginary. This links to my character’s phrases of ‘We are a dream they dream’ and ‘no harm can come to them’ as he won’t know when he is awake or asleep. His hallucinations are almost like a day dream as he imagines events that aren’t actually happening. Hearing voices or other sounds is the most common form of hallucination. This is the form of hallucination that my character suffers from in my short piece. The voice itself can be one you know such as a friend or family member or even someone who had died or it can be one you’ve never heard before. The voice may whisper, shout or talk. I believe that in my piece, the voices will slowly get louder and louder. As the voices get louder, I will repeat my short phrase louder so the sounds builds up in a crescendo. They may be negative and disturbing. You might hear voices every now and then, or the voices may be there permanently. 

There are some common misconceptions about schizophrenia, there are two things that many people presume are related to schizophrenia. However, they have nothing to do with it at all. Originally, I also thought that these were symptoms and could be included in my piece. However, I was wrong. The first one is Split personality. It is commonly thought people with schizophrenia have a split personality, this means they are acting perfectly normally one minute and irrationally or bizarrely the next, this is not true and this isn’t related to schizophrenia. The next one is violent behaviour. Some people also presume this is related to schizophrenia. However, people with the condition are rarely dangerous or aggressive.

Any violent behaviour is usually sparked off by illegal drugs such as marijuana or it can also be caused by alcohol, which is the same for people who don't have schizophrenia. This is interesting as although the voices in their head are disturbing or violent, this won’t actually affect their behaviour.