I once read about an experimental mental hospital for people with schizophrenic symptoms in California called Soteria House.
At Soteria house, the philosophy was to let the mental patients do whatever they wanted with the exception of hurting people. They got to run around naked if they wanted to, and there was a room for them to break things in (with breakable objects).
The staff was trained on a method to help the schizophrenics sort out reality from delusion. They were assisted by being told which things others couldn’t see and were asked to interpret them as they would a dream. The result was that most of them were better in three months, were able to be independent in six months and a very low proportion of them (I think 15%?) had another schizophrenia episode.
This experiment was repeated at another location in California, though I forgot the name of the sister house. You can also check out Soteria Bern in Germay.
I think it may have been important that the emphasis was on “try interpreting that a different way” instead of “that isn’t real”—because there is likely to have been some emotional or belief content in what they were experiencing that they needed to process (for the same reason we have to process feelings and can’t just repress them). It was probably also very important that the patients didn’t feel trapped. If you feel trapped, you’re less likely to trust the people helping you. It might be hard for a person who is already confused about reality to tell whether someone is gaslighting them. It probably takes a lot of trust to accept this type of guidance.
They weren’t using Bayes specifically to convince patients that their delusions weren’t real, but I think this is still relevant because they were essentially getting the patients interpret delusions in a more rational way.
A Related Experiment:
I once read about an experimental mental hospital for people with schizophrenic symptoms in California called Soteria House.
At Soteria house, the philosophy was to let the mental patients do whatever they wanted with the exception of hurting people. They got to run around naked if they wanted to, and there was a room for them to break things in (with breakable objects).
The staff was trained on a method to help the schizophrenics sort out reality from delusion. They were assisted by being told which things others couldn’t see and were asked to interpret them as they would a dream. The result was that most of them were better in three months, were able to be independent in six months and a very low proportion of them (I think 15%?) had another schizophrenia episode.
This experiment was repeated at another location in California, though I forgot the name of the sister house. You can also check out Soteria Bern in Germay.
I think it may have been important that the emphasis was on “try interpreting that a different way” instead of “that isn’t real”—because there is likely to have been some emotional or belief content in what they were experiencing that they needed to process (for the same reason we have to process feelings and can’t just repress them). It was probably also very important that the patients didn’t feel trapped. If you feel trapped, you’re less likely to trust the people helping you. It might be hard for a person who is already confused about reality to tell whether someone is gaslighting them. It probably takes a lot of trust to accept this type of guidance.
They weren’t using Bayes specifically to convince patients that their delusions weren’t real, but I think this is still relevant because they were essentially getting the patients interpret delusions in a more rational way.