Lori Schiller's 'The Voices'

Lori Schiller described her journey of experience from living with a mental disorder, Schizophrenia, from her early adulthood until her current age when she wrote her story. Lori Schiller grew up in relatively “normal” middle class family with her father, mother, and two brothers. Her family and she are very close and she has almost daily contact with them as her disorder became to be unmanageable. This is important to note because throughout the novel, there are several chapters from the members of family and their own perspective of what was going on with Lori as well as their own feelings about it.

In Schiller’s case, she began to develop symptoms of Schizophrenia at the young age of 17. When she first experienced “The Voices” as she calls them, she was working at a summer camp. She was in the process of dealing with a breakup when in the middle of the night, she heard a powerful Voice say “You must die!” (Schiller, L., 6). The Voices continually screamed obscene profanity at her until she would leave her room and run outside onto a trampoline and jumped until she was physically exhausted. For the rest of the time she worked at the camp she was harassed by The Voices at night and during the day she would typically spend most of her time alone

Lori Schiller and Lori Winters moved in together in an apartment in New York City. Lori Schiller’s mood became to hit a low very early into living together. She often became rude during this time as well. Lori Schiller at this time also became reckless, especially one time she gambled and lost everything had on her. Also during this time, Lori Schiller also told her co-workers all of the confidential information that were on their files. Because of this insensitive and reckless action, she lost her job. This is around the first time, Lori Schiller became suicidal. She tried to kill herself the first time during this year after college and was