Perception Isn T Always Believing

David Goldberg
Mr. Bailin
English
4/13/14
Seeing Isn’t Always Believing

Seeing is believing. Or so they say. When you see a woman crossing the street with her recently groomed poodle, do you question if she is actually there? When you hear your mom calling your name from across the apartment, do you question if she is actually calling you? Well, 61% of the Western Hemisphere has the luxury of not questioning reality. However, the other 39% experience hallucinations monthly, weekly, or even daily. (MedicineNet)
Hallucinations. What are they? How do we get them? How do we prevent them? All answers unknown to the common person. A hallucination is “a sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind, usually manifested
as visual or auditory images.” (Dictionary.com) They can come in the form of sight, smell, sound, taste, touch and many more. The three main causes of hallucinations are Alzheimer’s, eye disorders, and schizophrenia. Fifty one million people worldwide or 1.1% of the population over eighteen years old suffer from schizophrenia. (Teeple, Caplan, Stern) Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a breakdown in thinking and poor emotional responses. All ethnic groups, men and women are affected equally around the globe. Hallucinations usually being in schizophrenics from ages sixteen to thirty. There is no cure as of today, meaning you experience hallucinations for the rest of your life.
Luckily, in the late 1950’s, antipsychotic drugs became a necessity for patients of this illness, not curing, but making their sensations shorter and milder.
The only downside to these drugs was the unpleasant side effects that came with them, such as muscle stiffness and tremor. In 1990, clozapine, the first “atypical antipsychotic drug” was introduced in the United States. The risk of movement disorders for this new drug was significantly lower, but there is the potential of a blood disorder, agranulocytosis, loss of white blood cells requiring a blood test every one to two weeks. Clozapine is still the drug of choice for schizophrenic patients, even though the constant blood tests are costly and hard to keep up
with. Hallucinations come in many different forms.
They can affect every sense individually or multiple at once. Somes types of hallucinations include visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile. The most common visual hallucination is not associated with schizophrenia, but often occurs in normal life. Closed-eye hallucinations are those that happen when one is in a dark room or when their eyes are shut. You see fuzziness, geometric patterns, and color flashes. Auditory is the most common type of hallucination in a schizophrenic person. They can be elementary or complex. Elementary hallucinations can be as mild as hissing or whistling. Often times these are less harmless and more of an annoyance. Complex hallucinations are when you hear music or voices usually warning you of false danger or talking to you about your behavior. These voices can possibly lead to suicidal thoughts or even death. Eugen Bleuler, head of the Burghölzi asylum, from 1898 to 1927, stated that his patients were all convinced that the voices were real. They described them to him in vivid detail. “For example, a patient claims that a ‘voice’ is perched above each of his ears. One voice is a little larger than the other, but both are about the size of a walnut, and they consist of nothing but a large ugly mouth”, Bleuler wrote in a 1911 monograph.
(Sacks) Now do you understand why seeing isn’t always believing? Hopefully in the near future there will be no need to worry if what you hear or see is actually there. Hopefully there will be a cure for these horrible diseases causing hallucinations. Hopefully the percentage of deaths from hallucinations will be zero if not close. So, did you really just read this paper, or was it all in your head?

Works Cited

"Antipsychotic Medications." MedicineNet. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Teeple, Ryan C., Jason P. Caplan, and Theodore A. Stern. "What Are Visual Hallucinations?" National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 18 Sept. 0000. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
"Schizophrenia." NIMH RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.
Sacks, Oliver W. Hallucinations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. Print.