Art that shows what schizophrenia feels like

Brut America

"Schizophrenia feels like there's always a ghost around you."  Schizophrenia is one of the most stigmatized mental illnesses. Here's how artist and animator @xoradmagical is helping people understand the disorder ...

Transcript

00:00Look out the window, it's me!

00:02I'm trying to show people the experience of schizophrenia with a lot of people

00:07is that everything is alive and you can't choose that perception.

00:17It's an artistic depiction of how it feels both emotionally and kind of overwhelmingly.

00:30I was in my second year of university and I remember I'd be in class and I was doing

00:44like art school and I would have to leave the class and I didn't know why but I just

00:51started going underneath like the staircases at the end of the building and just hiding

00:55and I remember in those moments it wasn't voices yet but it was intrusive

01:00like if intrusive thoughts had life to them I started hearing just little like laughter

01:06here and there like little shrieks and little things and I just kind of thought to myself

01:12okay well like this is weird I feel like I'm like is this tripping am I tripping

01:17and I got really confused I dropped out of university because I couldn't deal with it

01:36anymore I remember it ended up in me being homeless and traveling around my province

01:42in Canada it's New Brunswick my art with hallucinations started when I was homeless

01:55because I used to graffiti and I used to kind of like have permanent markers with me everywhere

02:01schizophrenia feels like there's always a ghost around you you always feel like there's something

02:06like haunting you or around you and you see things and it's it's such a weird experience

02:12that the only way I could express myself was by starting to draw the faces sometimes when I'm not

02:19hallucinating I'll draw them more neatly but right now I'm hallucinating so I would love for you guys

02:24to see the spirits coming out of my hand it got to a point where I was drawing the faces and I'd

02:28look at them on the wall the drawing that I did and I'd start talking to it and so I started

02:34building a relationship with this thing I started to draw them more and more when I was getting out

02:41of the psych unit for the first time I was hospitalized because there was something about

02:45it that was so comforting and I felt like I wasn't as alone as I used to feel when I'm making an art

02:52piece I feel like kind of ethereal like I'm making it and I feel like I'm doing something for myself

03:00for other people and it feels like a service

03:13do you see them like as people or are they stylized or are they

03:17you have to understand that schizophrenia is so much more complicated and multi-dimensional in

03:22how it works hurt everyone you love hurt them hurt them

03:30we all have intrusive thoughts okay but just because I'm schizophrenic it doesn't mean that

03:36I automatically have voices that are like kill kill kill it doesn't work like that

03:42there's so many people that I met especially through tiktok who have schizophrenia who are

03:48practicing lawyers who are doctors who are nurses it's a spectrum and there's such a thing as high

03:55functioning schizophrenia if you can watch my experiences and understand that you know all

04:02these things that people think about schizophrenia and how it affects them and how it affects you

04:07and understand that you know all these things that people think about schizophrenia are mostly

04:13wrong then you start to learn something new and then it makes the world a better

04:17place because people are connecting again

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