January Schofield: A Case Study Of Social Psychology

January Schofield, age 14, started talking to her imaginary friends at the age of 2, accompanied by frequent staring into the far distance for an extended period of time. She had over 200 imaginary friends whom were all, unaccountably, named after units of measurements, numbers or other items that belong in learned linear sequences. Despite the vast number of imaginary friends she had, she never mixed any of them up, including the clothes that they were wearing and their individual characteristics. At the instructions of these friends, she has attacked people around her and even tried committing suicide several times, by the age of 6. Specifically, at the age of 4, she tried to kill her infant brother. In addition, her episodes of violence were unpredictable and could be triggered by anything that did not please her, including addressing her by January or dismissing her warped visual perceptions. She also required …show more content…
She sees her psychologist thrice a week and psychiatrist an hour a week, whereby they talk about her feelings and hallucinations. She also has equine therapy which helps promote her emotional growth. In addition, she attends school and has lessons in a class specially for “severely emotionally disturbed” children. This allowed January to interact with peers that are more emotionally and mentally similar, and form purposeful affiliations. Her apartment was also modelled like the psychiatric unit she was warded in, maintaining the “high-structure, low-stress” model, allowing her to function well. On top of these, I think that psychosocial treatments such as social skills training and family intervention should also be implemented so that the family is able to develop a more positive form of interaction to positively change the family affect, in turn lowering levels of anxiety that triggers