How Schizophrenics Around the World Describe the Voices They Hear

Mashable - How we define mental illness is one of the most fraught issues in psychiatry; skeptics of the psychiatric establishment fear that broad definitions of mental illness could make people see their symptoms as more problematic than necessary. A small paper in the British Journal of Psychiatry adds to the debate, offering a new perspective on how schizophrenia is experienced across cultures.

Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann worked with a team of psychologists to interview 20 schizophrenics in three cities: San Mateo, California; Accra, Ghana; and Chennai, India. Most of the patients were in their thirties or forties and had been ill for years. There were important similarities across the board — almost everyone reported a mix of positive and negative experiences with their voices — but there were several cross-cultural differences in how patients experienced and interpreted their symptoms.

Schizophrenics in California reported the most negative feelings about their voices; everyone Lurhmann spoke to used clinical language when talking about their voices, and no one said the overall experience was positive. Fourteen of the 20 patients admitted that their voices told them to hurt themselves or others. “Usually, it’s like torturing people, to take their eye out with a fork, or cut someone’s head and drink their blood, really nasty stuff,” said one. Only a few patients said they had personal relationships with the voices; just two regularly heard family members. Eight could never figure out who was speaking to them, and resorted to giving them abstract names like “Entity.”


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