The TED Talk, a tale of mental illness- from the inside, was presented by Elyn Saks, a woman with chronic schizophrenia and her experiences with the disease. Throughout the talk, Saks refers to her written notes, which provide deeper insight into a few of her psychotic episodes. Saks also states how each mentally ill patient has unique experiences of psychosis and no two stories are the same. Some of her psychotic episodes include how she couldn’t handle the closing of her law practice, and how her best friend Steve realized that Saks was experiencing a level of psychosis that is “as bad as he had ever seen”. Saks also talks about how she spent her time at psychiatric hospitals with the diagnosis of “grave” chronic schizophrenia. Saks also mentions how schizophrenia …show more content…
Saks then goes on to recount more of her psychotic episodes, for example, when she sang loudly on top of the Yale Law School library and asked her friends whether they killed people, which made her friends think that Saks was on drugs. She also goes on to talk about how one of her law school professors ultimately brought her to a hospital and how she was involuntarily hospitalized and placed in restraints. The restraints were horrifying for Saks and she talks about how every psychiatric patient she talked to believed that restraints did not help them, but rather, they seemed to harm them, as highlighted by the statistic that one in three patients die in mechanical restraints. Based on her experiences as well as the experiences of others, Saks mentions how she believes in anti-force treatment as she believes that force is not an effective way to treat psychiatric patients. Saks then goes on to talk about how she tried to reduce the amount of medication she took to combat her schizophrenia and how her efforts did not work and how she needed to go back on