Photos help patients face reality: Aim Is to Stop Mental Retreat

              At Central Louisiana State hospital, they're doing every­thing possible to keep a mental patient from retreating more and more into his own private world of unreality.
It's a program which has many facets, many offshoots. About two years ago some new and much larger mirrors were installed in the bathrooms of this mental institution.
The mirrors created quite a stir among the patients. Reac­tions were immediate and vari­ed. Some of the patients stared into the mirrors as though they : were seeing themselves for the,' first time.
When Dr. Marvin Miller as­sociate professor "of psychiatry at the Louisiana State university medical school, heard about this he began to wonder.
PHOTOS TAKEN Would a chronically-ill pa­tient be able to recognize him­self in a photograph? Or had such a patient retreated into his own private world to such an extent he had lost even this means of self-identity ?
"One of the symptoms of a psychosis may be a feeling of the patient that his body has be­come alienated from him and this may give rise to despair and make the patient feel even* more hopeless about his sltua, tion," explained Dr. Miller, who visits the Central Louisiana State hospital onec a week as a psy­chiatric consultant. "Sometimes such a patient may even begin to doubt his own existence and may behave as though parts of his body don't belong to him." Because of this phenomenon, the psychiatrist and his col­leagues decided it might prove interesting to find out how much a patient would react to his own |photograph; whether he would ibe able to recognize himself in the photograph and what effect seeing his picture might have on faim.
Dr. Miller and his coworkers began   taking   pictures   of   pa­tients. "Sometimes we would take a
picture of a patient in a 'group with other patients," explained the psychiatrist, who has charge of the residency program at the hospital. "Sometimes we would take a picture of the patient alone."   •
Dr. Miller said, "After the picture was developed we would show it to the patient."
VARIED REACTIONS
"If it was a group picture we would ask him, 'Are you in this picture?' " he added. "Then we
would say, 'Point to yourself.' If it was a picture taken of a patient by himself, we would say, 'Who is this?' "  ,
Dr. Miller said 40 mental pa­tients were photographed, the, majority of whom were schizo-' PHOTO: SELF-IDENTIFICATION TEST FOR MENTAL PATIENTS
At  LSU  medical  school  a  staff member  checks through eye photos.  Observers are Edmond Kalifey  (left), senior medical  student, and Dr. Marvin Miller.