Wow! As an Education major with an endorsement in Special Education, I thought I understood what it meant to have schizophrenia, or could at least understand what typically happens in the mind of a person with schizophrenia. I was really wrong.
As one of the quests in my ED TECH 532: Educational Games and Simulations class, I was given the opportunity to use the virtual world, Second Life, to step into the shoes of someone with schizophrenia for a brief amount of time. Of course, this small virtual sampling is minuscule compared to actually suffering from this debilitating mental illness, but it did give me insight as to the types of voices someone may hear and visual hallucinations someone may experience.
Even though I knew the experience wasn't happening in real life, I found myself wanting to examine the items and situations that the voices were telling me was real. For example, one voice mentions picking up and gun and wanting to shoot someone. It was almost second nature to just obey the voices in your head, believing it may be the sub-conscious. In this case, clearly the voices were meant to show the distorted thinking and ideas that individuals with schizophrenia may experience every minute of every day. This simulation was meant to shake reality, and the negative and derogatory voice did just that, create a sense of paranoia and negativity that was difficult to shake after the experience concluded.
As I said in my introduction, wow...
The Virtual Hallucinations map can be found at: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sedig/32/50/24
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