On Friday, April 30, at 10:30 a.m., Gavin Newsom and I will be on the the steps of City Hall in San Francisco to talk to the public and to the press about the initiative. I hope to see you there!
Also this coming week, the Mental Health Association is sponsoring an event to raise public awareness about schizophrenia. I've discussed this event in an early post .
The association will have an virtual reality machine that allows people to experience what it feels like to have schizophrenia. Of course, a virtual reality machine cannot possibly show the range of this mental illness, or what it feels like to have it all the time, but it can give members of the public an experience that many people with schizophrenia say is an accurate approximation of some of what they experience.
In an earlier post, I discussed the fact that, on average, people with schizophrenia suffer with the illness for five years before it is diagnosed and treated. Our society should not allow one out of 100 of its members to suffer a severe and disabling, but treatable, physical illness for five years without treatment.
We allow people to suffer from schizophrenia without diagnosis because we don't know they have it, and we don't know what it's like to have it. This week, we'll get an idea. I hope that you can all stop by the Capitol, or 925 L Street, to participate in this virtual reality experience. The machine will be available on three separate days for public use, and I'll post those dates and times and locations on Monday.
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