This is a true story from a family member that may help some people with schizophrenia regain their self-awareness: My brother has schizophrenia, and he and my family have been struggling with it for more than 10 years. At his worst, he was completely out of control. He was delusional, combative, and his thoughts were completely disconnected from reality. Despite our best efforts, he ended up on the streets, with dirty, tattered clothes and a putrid smell, just like many schizophrenics. More importantly, he received many inpatient and outpatient treatments in our city and county over the course of a dozen years, usually containing several sessions each. He was placed under mandatory control and forced to receive medication on three occasions, and each time things got better and he was able to regain control and become clear-headed. Unfortunately, however, he did not feel that there was anything wrong with him from the beginning. He believed that he was not ill and that the so-called schizophrenia was simply a falsehood. Such thinking led him inevitably to repeatedly stop his medication and to fall back into a vicious cycle of psychotic episodes and wandering the streets. For years we were unable to convince him that he was sick, that the disease was destroying his life and that he needed treatment, and after so many failures we almost gave up, almost resigned ourselves to it. But then it occurred to me that even if he didn’t believe me or anyone else, maybe he could still believe his own eyes. So, during these past two years of his schizophrenia, I decided to secretly film his words and actions, both when he was interacting with his family and when he was by himself. For the next 6 months, I used my cell phone camera to record his psychotic episodes. I filmed his confused and fragmented speech; I filmed him suddenly becoming belligerent towards those around him for no reason, including passersby who had no interaction with him. In short, I proved to him that without provocation from anyone, he would still seize up. I compiled the footage into a few hours of video to recreate him in his truest form. At one point during the latter part of the six months, I had him return to the control center for a few months of inpatient treatment and forced medication. There he regained mental stability and self-control. But he continued to deny that he was ill. I did not show him the video immediately after he regained his sobriety and self-control; I did not want to give him such a big boost right away. I was looking for an appropriate time, so I waited even after he recovered until three months later. Before showing him the video, I clearly warned him what kind of scenes he would see. At first he refused to watch the video, thinking that I had bad motives and was just trying to humiliate him again. But after several communications, he agreed to watch part of it, so we sat down and started playing the video. At the beginning, he was very angry with me for filming him; and he made up a lot of reasons and excuses to justify his behavior while ignoring the performances themselves. But I still convinced him to keep watching, and he reluctantly agreed. Next we sat together and watched the video, and I copied all the content to my IPAD and encouraged him to watch it again when he wanted to, more or less alone. Gradually, he began to feel uneasy about what he was seeing. He was shocked and disappointed by what he saw on camera, unable to believe that he would say and do something like that. But there was no denying the fact that that was what he had done. So he gradually began to reconsider the only possibility: that there was something seriously wrong with him. For the first time in a long time, he looked at himself as a bystander and was forced to conclude, while awake, that the man in the video was a schizophrenic. Then, my brother decided to undergo inpatient treatment. He stayed for a short time in a place not far from home and then moved back home until he found his own place. It has been two years since then. He has had the longest sustained period of health since his diagnosis and is still maintaining it. He stopped denying his illness and, more importantly, started taking his medication seriously and promised never to fall back into the state he was in. For the first time since he got sick, he began to reflect on himself, and we, the entire family, began to become optimistic. As you and I know, the lack of self-awareness in people with schizophrenia can be a real headache and a nuisance. In fact for many long-term schizophrenics, lack of self-awareness is the only obstacle to treatment and recovery. I think video might just be the way to go, because my brother’s condition is no less severe than any other patient’s. He was so irredeemable that he seemed destined to spend the rest of his life on the streets, or in prison, or in a mental institution. It was a tragedy that had haunted our family for a long time, but now, we have regained hope and faith. More importantly, I believe this approach can bring change and hope to other patients and their families as well.