Leicester psychologists have, for the first time, created body-maps of the sensations which arise during hallucinations in people experiencing psychosis.
The study, published in The Lancet’s EClinicalMedicine, provides the most extensive descriptive data to date on the feelings which arise during hallucinations and where individuals reported sensations in the body. University of Leicester researchers also studied the emotions reported during hallucinations, with confusion, fear and frustration being the most common.
Although there was great variation in the localisation of feelings across participants, for each individual feelings were recurrently concentrated in particular body areas. Areas of concentration often held repeated sources of feelings like pain, heat, or tension.
Dr Katie Melvin, of the Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour at the University of Leicester and corresponding author for the study, said: “During a systematic review of existing research, we found indicators of the contributions that multiple senses, emotions and feelings may make to hallucinations.
“We designed a study and developed the novel but simple multimodal unusual sensory experience (MUSE) map method to investigate these features further. MUSE maps involve documenting hallucinations in daily life and include body-mapping. The article shares new insights through body-maps and data on the immediate feeling of hallucinations.
“The range of feelings in the body and around the body (into peri-personal space) were particularly interesting. Participants often described that the method helped them share experiences that were difficult to put into words.
“The methods and outcomes of this study can contribute to advances on how we understand hallucinations and how we can support people who experience them. The next steps for this area of research will be further understanding the embodiment and feeling of hallucinations in different populations and developing interventions to support with this.”
Psychosis is a term which describes experiences where an individual may have difficulties in determining what is real and what is not real.
Research indicates psychosis is associated with experiencing trauma, adverse life events, and stress. People may be given a diagnosis such as schizophrenia. Experiences of perceiving or believing things which those around us do not can also occur in physical health conditions such as brain tumours or acute infections.
Psychosis can have serious adverse outcomes on individuals including distress, lack of sleep, social withdrawal, lack of motivation, difficulties in carrying out daily activities, experiences of discrimination and lost opportunities.
Participants in this study were asked by the research team to prospectively document the feeling and senses of hallucinations for one week prior to an interview.
Novel visual diary methods involving drawing, writing and body-mapping generated 42 MUSE maps, which set out the specific areas across the body – and beyond, in so-called peripersonal space – where participants experienced sensations during hallucinations.
The study found that hallucinations were characterised by numerous feelings arising at once, often including multisensory, emotional, and embodied features. Researchers suggest further uptake of visual, ecological and prospective methods may enhance understandings of lived experiences of hallucinations.
Sometimes, NTs are so infuriating. Like there’s really someone who wrote a play about (I’m quoting) “a high-functioning autistic person and a normal autistic person".
It’s the end of the world and they have to decide society’s fate, which means they will make decisions “neither Leftist or Rightist” and test them on a Schizophrenic person who “wants everything and nothing at the same time”.
I shit you not. That’s really the premise of this whole play. Also, of course, no neurodivergent/mentally ill person is either involved in the project or has a part in the play because, according to the theatre company, “autistic actors are tired playing only autistic parts”.
Dude, do you even know how many autistic characters are played by NTs? You’re really gonna pretend you’re being inclusive by notincluding us? They’re being like “Oh, autistic people always have to pretend to be NTs, NTs should pretend to be autistic sometimes in return!”. That’s not how you’re supposed to achieve acceptance, dude!
They only have a behavioral therapist onboard (and the writer/director used to work in the socio-medical field). And they’re really pretending that it’s accurate representation.
Also, they added that they used staging to accentuate the inherent childishness that autistic people can display, and that “we have so much to learn from autistic people, they’re soooo enlightening”. Fuck off.
I don’t want to weigh in on the schizophrenic representation, since I’m not, but given the facial expressions and everything, I’m guessing it’s just as bad…
Here’s the trailer. It’s in French and, despite pretending that they’re uber inclusive, they didn’t put any subtitles. But I think you can already see how fake and unappropriate it seems to be.
Also, what a shock, comments are disabled. I guess they didn’t want autistic people or schizophrenic people to weigh on the subject…
Here’s a really cool discord server i run, it’s open to anyone who experiences psychosis, we’ve got lots of cool stuff including channels for LGBTQ+ people, people of color, selfies, and food prep. We’re also working on our blog psychosis-spectrum.tumblr.com (Still in early stages of construction) and organizing a weekly online movie night (With frequent random movie sessions during the week).
Drink some water, take a deep breath, if you’ve been wearing a binder for more than eight hours, take it off. Stretch, take any medications you need to, have some food, correct your posture, go outside if you can. You’re going to get through this.
Because we are seen by so many people as ill because of our sexual orientation or gender identity, a lot of us are reluctant to come forward about mental illness… That’s contributed to a lot of shame around it.”
We need more competent providers so that queer and trans people seeking care receive the care they need and don’t have to play the part of educator to their health and social service providers!
Scientists are studying a connection between the parasite Toxoplasma gondii (one of our personal favorites!) and its effect on behavior, most specifically, how it seemingly makes rats less afraid of cats. This isn’t mind control—if when a rat sees a cat, it’s still going to run away in fear. But while rats typically avoid cat urine, those infected with toxoplasma gondii do not.
According to Ars Technica:
“When trying to explain how Toxo produces this effect, [researcher Ajai Vyas] initially focused on the obvious: the parasite’s presence in the brain. When Toxo infects, it barricades itself in thick-walled cysts to evade the immune system, and these cysts can remain for decades in a few sites, including the brain. If Toxo forms cysts in specific parts of the brain, it could do something there to affect behavior. But so far, different studies have found cysts in many different locations with no obvious pattern to their distribution, so it’s unclear if cyst location can influence behavior.”
Toxo, as the parasite is sometimes called, is not only interesting because of its curious influence on the predatory relationship between cats and rats, but also because it can infect many kinds of animals, including a third of humans worldwide. To the average person, Toxo is about as dangerous as the flu, but it is also associated with disorders like schizophrenia. However, scientists warn that these associations should be taken with a grain of salt. While connections between Toxo and behavior are present, researchers disagree on exactly what its effects are, on rats, cats, and humans alike.
“The reality is that human behavior and mental illness are complex, and many of the Toxo studies are not standardized and have yet to be replicated. Toxo certainly doesn’t make it easy to do this work—there’s no good way to detect Toxo cysts in a living person, and the studies rely on correlations with Toxo antibody levels. But antibodies are a crude measure that don’t tell you about a number of things that could affect behavior, such as when the infection occurred or which strain of the parasite you’re infected with.”
i feel like people are under the opinion that it’s ok to purposefully trigger a psychotic person IF. IF they’re a bad enough person. IF it’s funny enough. IF you’re friends with them. IF you’ve got a personal vendetta against them. IF they’re acting crazy. hell, even if they’re just existing or talking about their struggles in a public space. or even a fucking private one. which is so incredibly fucked up. your support for psychotic people should not be conditional.
literally, people only expect other psychotic people to stand up for psychotic people!!! they don’t expect anyone else to have our backs. so they see it as easy ableism to get away with bc they know they just have to find the right button to push before that psychotic person is unstable— which is why when psychotics say we need y’all on our side we mean it. we need y’all beside us
[ID: a screenshot of a comment here on Tumblr, made by the user @ratt–park. It reads “one time i commented on a post and said schizophrenia isn’t your punchline. and people assumed i was schizophrenic because only psychotic people will stick up for psychotic people, obviously!! and i got sooooo many replies of people saying they were stalking me or that they know what i’ve done etc. and like. why tf is that your first response. why. what possesses a person to do that shit”. /ID end]
Hello, my name Daniel and I struggle with Schizophrenia. It really all started with me being to scared to get near under my bed, in which I would jump to my bed from as far from my bed as I could, occasionally making me hit my arm or knee of the bed frame. Next, I’d look up to a figure staring at me or going to another room and someone is staring at something. Finally, the delusions were the worst part. I’d think if the full moon was full, I would be unsafe, I thought my limbs were turning purple or that someone was after me. My friends would tell me nobody is where I’m saying one of my hallucinations would be or would say that the moon or something would hurt me. I didn’t believe I had Schizophrenia or any other mental illness but finally, I believed my friends after the first psychotic episode. I was stressed over school and decided to go on a walk and sit down for a while. I constantly got worried someone was behind me and would look behind me often. Finally, i looked behind me and a figure was staring at me and started walking towards me. I kept saying, ”Please leave me alone,” or “Please dont hurt me.”
Anyway, now I’m with friends that help me through it and understand.
At first sight, Tree Roots appears as a jumble of bright colors and wild abstract shapes. Powerful strokes and thickly applied paint mark the canvas. The subject only becomes apparent when you look more closely: tree roots, plants, leaves, with the brown and yellow of a sandy woodland floor under them. Van Gogh painted other scenes of trees and woods. He often cut off his compositions in an unusual fashion, often painting trees without their tops, or a piece of woodland showing only undergrowth and flowers - or, as here, only the roots of the trees.
Vincent van Gogh spent the last few months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town just north of Paris, after he left an asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1890. Tree Roots is considered by many scholars to be Van Gogh’s last painting before his death late July 1890.
In 2020, with the help of a postcard from 1905, the exact location where Vincent van Gogh painted his last work has been pinpointed after being hidden in plain view for years among a tangle of roots next to a rural lane near Paris. Experts say the discovery sheds new light on the anguished painter’s mental state on the day he is widely believed to have fatally shot himself.
Researchers believe that the composition and execution of Tree Roots - a tight focus on gnarled roots on a hillside - have led to it being seen as a “harbinger of abstraction”.
ALT
