Schizophrenia is a very difficult mental disorder. People who suffer from this illness are often unable to make a difference between reality and thoughts, they can hear voices and have hallucinations.
If you’ve ever seen the great movie Beautiful mind, it is pretty much clear to you how difficult things can be for people suffering from schizophrenia.
Art is always a good way when it comes to struggling with difficulties in life no matter which form they take. In this case, people who suffer from schizophrenia turned to painting as a medium of expressing their inner conditions.
Some of the schizophrenic artwork pictures painted by mentally ill patients can be disturbing, but art can bring us closer to them and make it easier to understand their everyday struggles. Let’s scroll this unusual schizophrenia art gallery for some insights and compassion.
More about Schizophrenia
People who suffer from this disorder need to deal on a daily basis with their own mind trying to make things difficult for them, add to that the outside world, and you have two things that make your life very difficult.
As far as we can remember, movies and TV has always displayed people with schizophrenia as being dangerous and crazy people. But before we can really appreciate the schizophrenic drawings in this gallery made by real people with the disorder ,we have to understand what it is a little better.
While most people with schizophrenia suffer from delusions, this is by far not the only symptom of this disorder and there are many other things to consider such as:
- False beliefs about the world around them
- Hallucinations
- Agitated body movements
- Ideas that would be considered as weird by others and more.
We do not want to get into the disorder into too much detail as this article wants to highlight the positive effect of art on people with schizophrenia.
The benefits of art on schizophrenia
In recent years studies have shown that when people with schizophrenia devote their attention to creating art, it helps with their symptoms, and calms them down, and helps them focus. This is of course comes together with the standard treatment and does not replace traditional medicine etc but it has been proven to help.
Usually the type of art created as a treatment is sculpting, drawing or something that is more visual in nature.
The therapeutic nature of these actions help the patients express themselves better, sometimes better than talk therapy but mostly, it comes together.
Let’s take a look at some of the schizophrenia art creations real people created, now that we have some context.
Schizophrenia art gallery
1.”Electricity Makes You Float” by Karen Blair, a woman living with schizophrenia.
2. Notice the variety of moods, the cyst-like creatures growing out of this man’s head, representative of the confusion schizophrenic art can sometimes bring.
3. These two photos were done by an unknown schizophrenic artist trying to capture the abstract nightmare of his thoughts.
4. Done by Edmund Monsiel, an artist in the early 1900’s believed to have been a schizophrenic
5. This drawing was found in an old asylum, its artist was a paranoid schizophrenic.
6. A nefarious depiction of the affliction by Erik Baumann.
7. In 1950, Charles Steffen began compulsively making schizophrenia art like this on wrapping paper from inside a mental hospital. His obsession with transformation is very clear.
8. This artist suffers from a rare case of paranoid schizophrenia that causes him to have visual hallucinations. One of these visions is a figure named “Wither,” shown below.
9. Probably an accurate portrayal of how schizophrenia feels like on the inside. Great art.
10. “Motifs of Mania,” depicts schizophrenia as a shadowy menace.
11. Karen May Sorensen’s work on her blog while she was on varying levels of medication.
12. By Louis Wain from the early 1900’s. They capture a slow descent into varying levels of schizophrenic episodes.
13. Another by Draak. Notice the two headed subjects in both pieces.
14. This piece captures the auditory hallucinations associated with the disease.
15. Schizophrenic artist feels trapped
16. Johfra Draak drew this in 1967, depicting a schizophrenic Dante’s Inferno.
These schizophrenic art pictures are a little bit creepy but art is art, so let’s share it.
