Elyn Saks Mental Illness Analysis

Elyn Saks: A Tale of Mental Illness—From the Inside Schizophrenia is perhaps one of the most treaded mental disorders, and often confused with multiple personality disorder, which is now known as dissociative identity disorder (DID). With hallucinations, false senses of reality, and delusions, paranoid thoughts that have no basis in reality, schizophrenia is the truly terrifying to not only those around the patient, but to the patient themself. For Professor Elyn Saks, a professor of law, psychiatry, and psychology at the University of Southern California, this comes as no surprise. As a chronic schizophrenic, Professor Saks recalled one of her worst psychotic episodes, which occurred shortly after her New Haven analyst, Dr. White, revealed to her that he was closing his practice. Saks described the news to be shattering, and the trigger to her psychotic episode. Saks continues to describe the psychotic episode, telling the audience hat her best friend flew out to be with her. Saks begins to quote from her writings: "...[f]or a week or more, I had barely eaten. I was gaunt. I walked

I, personally, have always loved to learn about the mind, because it is so complex. Schizophrenia was the disorder that interested me the most, so I naturally chose Elyn Saks’ TED talk, because she described it from a schizophrenic’s point of view. We don’t often get to see things from a psychiatric patient’s point of view, because the stigmatism around them. That being said, Sak’s points toward the end of her TED talk about needing to invest more research and time into these mental illnesses is an amazing proposal. We need to stop worrying about the dangers the mentally ill pose and start learning about more ways to help them, instead of locking them in prison or mental institutions. They’re people just like us, and they deserve to be treated as