We recently started our psych coursework-our last official class-this week, and we watched a short, 3-minute clip of a schizophrenic man being interviewed about his day-to-day life. He was homeless and clearly delusional, asking his social worker to please put in a request for the man’s new eyeglasses frames not to have a transmitter placed inside them.

The man was clearly not sharing the same reality as the rest of us watching him. I had the inclination to smile-not to laugh, just smile-and saw many of my classmates reacting the same way. I don’t know what the smile’s really from: a defense mechanism on how to deal with someone that has totally lost touch with reality? Amusement? Humor?

And then I thought about the man a little deeper. How much suffering this disease has caused. Not only in his current mental state, constantly dealing with his anxiety and paranoia, but also all the suffering from his former self. The one that had goals and dreams as a kid. The one before his schizophrenia took all that from him.

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