BBC's article, How Extreme Isolation Warps Minds, describes the psychological effects of isolation and solitary confinement. Through a series of studies of people that have been imprisoned, lived an ascetical lifestyle, or have participated in experimental simulations of isolation, conclusions were formed about the cognitive effects caused by extreme loneliness. In one instance, a woman who had been hiking in the Iraqi mountains had been imprisoned by the Iranian police and was put in solitary confinement, in which she had little to no human contact for up to 10,000 hours. After her release, she experienced multiple hallucinations including some where she would hear screaming, but would not realize the screams were her own until someone would intervene and bring her back to reality. Additionally, the study proved that isolation warps your sense of time. Maurizio Montalbini, a sociologist and caving guru, spent 1 year in a cave, completely isolated from human interaction. This completely altered his sleep-wake cycle, changing it from the normal habit (12 hours awake, 12 hours asleep) to 36 hours awake to 12 hours of sleep. Overall, this loneliness can make you have higher blood pressure, a vulnerability to infection, and a decreased sense of logical and verbal reasoning, which all affect your cognitive state.
This article illustrates the severe effects of loneliness, which gives us a greater understanding of how important human interaction is in our lives. This study also shows how damaging confinement is to our minds, which inspires the following question: is it really humane or ethical to keep people (particularly captives) completely segregated from the human world? Considering that this causes paranoia, hallucinations, and a decreased sense of verbal and cognitive ability, it seems unjustified to use this as a means of justice.
Source:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140514-how-extreme-isolation-warps-minds
Author: Michael Bond
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