Mixed reality and mental illness

I could write a lengthy diatribe on this subject.

Most people know one of those concepts but the other is alien.

Imagine if a digital reality merged with our visual reality could be related to mental and behavioural disorders. While the former is science fiction the latter is often called pseudosience. Funny that.

A psychiatric delusion is something which a person feels in totality but is not experienced by anyone else. A useful insight is the view of the observer using reality of people who see in mixed reality. What I mean is watching an audience in a cinema playing a multiplayer augmented reality game is like watching a lot of deluded people if you're viewing without mixed reality systems.

This happens in a small sense already. Handsfree mobile phones make a person look mental. What I mean is unless you know handsfree devices exist a person walking down the road speaking to themselves is mad.

So subjective is the judgement of madness. It will be fascinating to see the years where mixed reality becomes a commercial reality. It will be a time when early adopters look mad to those who chose to stick with standard reality.

This is minor as a big social problem. But that's sort of the point in a way. To heal the stigma of mental illness needs it to be rediscovered in reality. It became hidden through severe mental illness being treated by removal out of society's view into hospital.

An unexpected possibility to achieve this is the advance of technology. People who chose or can afford mixed reality are empowered by a new experience of life itself. Those who don't see people acting crazy because they're not aware of their reality. They're not seeing the mixed reality the other person is seeing.