Schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses interfere with the ability to think, act and feel. When acutely ill, a person may lose contact with reality. The symptoms are often very distressing for people affected and those who care for them. These Speaking from experience video clips offer first-hand accounts from people who have experienced Schizophrenia. It was produced in partnership with SANE Australia.

"Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esmé Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the 'collected schizophrenias' but to those who wish to understand it as well. Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community's own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations...

At a summer camp in 1976, a 17-year-old girl suddenly hears a voice in the night. Booming out through the darkness, it makes her bolt awake. It says things that she has never before imagined. And it will be with her for years to come, tormenting her, robbing her of her sanity and very nearly her life.

"On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born -- a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam -- and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between...

In 1959, psychiatrist Dr. Alan Stone arrives at a mental hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan armed with the radical belief that schizophrenic patients should be treated with empathy and understanding. As his first study, he takes on the particularly challenging case of three men: Joseph, Leon, and Clyde, each of whom believes they are Jesus Christ. Dr. Stone begins a risky, unprecedented experiment that will push the boundaries of psychiatric medicine...

A neuroscientist explores the biological bases of schizophrenia and tells the heartbreaking story of his own brother's battle with the disease. When bright lives are, derailed by schizophrenia, bewildered and anxious families struggle to help, and to cope, even as scientists search for causes and treatments that prove elusive. Painful and often misunderstood, schizophrenia profoundly affects people who have the disease and their loved ones. Here...