Video Review 1 On Being Just Crazy Enough
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Course Professor
March 29, 2020
Video Review 1: On Being Just Crazy Enough
Joshua Walters reminded me of Bobby McFerrin with his jazz vocals and mouth beatboxing, I am not sure what this form of art is called. But what was most captivating was his explanation of bipolar disorder. I had no idea bipolar disorder had people acting with insanity. I am familiar with manic episodes where a person becomes reckless, talkative, suicidal and so forth. I had not come across symptoms like demonstrated by Walters during this manic episode. Although he employs humor in his talk, whatever he is discussing a traumatic experience.
Joshua Walters translates the negative of mental illness into positive instead of denying the existence of the illness. I am not sure if mental illness can be reframed into a positive one. Positive thinking yes, but making mental illness positive is almost impossible. The idea that the hypomanic edge is something similar to the state of mind successful people are in as they work to compete was eye-opening. Manic depression as a positive where a person is in a state of mind to do what is considered impossible is surely a positive way of approaching a condition such as bipolar.
In the video, the humor employed by Joshua Walters is not usual and maybe he is putting his idea into context by explaining the potential of people with bipolar when attacked by manic episodes. This video inspires me to go on and do more research. The idea presented in this video is interesting and I would like to find more evidence to establish that whatever is said holds some truth. I understand how creativity works and instances where somebody feels full of ideas and the idea that such instances are similar to hypomanic episodes is amazing.
Video Review 2: The Voices in my Head
I had not come across a person who experienced voices in their head in real life and only thought of it as a fictional idea from movies. Explaining to a person about voices in the head would indeed be shocking and not many people apart from professionals would know how to react. No wonder Longden’s friend reacted as she did. Listening to the video at the beginning I felt a curiosity that almost made me skip to parts where the narrator discussed the kind of condition she was suffering. I was curious to know what condition she was suffering from.
I did not want to judge her as insane because of the way she acted without finding the actual diagnosis but some of her behaviors such as pouring water on the teacher were something that required psychiatric attention in a ward. What was devastating was the fact that at some point people around her did not understand what she was going through. No wonder she faced the kind of stigma she did, discrimination, sexual and physical assault, things that could only worsen her situation. At this point, her psychiatrist was right, cancer might have been better.
This video was my first encounter with schizophrenia. It is quite a draining condition and surviving that level of haunting is quite encouraging. What I got from this video is that support from people around a person suffering from mental illness was very crucial to their recovery. Eleanor takes a significant amount of time to reinforce this thought. The best way to deal with schizophrenia was learning to take control of voices and certain feelings. Although these voices and feelings would recur, one could control them rather than having them control one. The medication would not have been effective without this kind of therapy.
