Addendum.

At the second and last day of training:

1) When a sign of psychosis was said to be "odd thoughts", the trainer was like, "Though not like we want to discourage anyone from having odd thoughts," and at that someone from the audience piped up, "Why would we!?!?".

2) For an auditory hallucinations exercise, we broke into groups of 3.  Two people just had a conversation, and one person rolled up a piece of paper and spoke into someone's ear phrases like "You're no good", "Why is she talking to you?", and "Can you trust her? You can't trust anyone."

Then, we all talked together about what it was like to try to keep up a conversation while hearing voices (many found it stressful and distracting) or to talk to someone who was hearing voices (many found that the person's mind seemed to be elsewhere, and that they had to repeat things a lot).

3) Someone asked if voices in people's heads only ever said bad things, or if they said good things on occasion, and at that we joked that voices would say "You look great!", or "Everyone loves you!".

Then, the trainer told a story of how she worked in a homeless shelter in the city, and one woman preferred to be alone with the voices in her head.

"She had been terribly abused throughout the course of her entire life, and she knew the voices, the different characters, how they treated her," the trainer was like.  "They were the only people that she could depend on."

At that, the room was silent.

Then, she was like, "She thought they were angels."

After even a longer pause at which everyone stared in awe at the trainer and her story, one staffer murmured, "That's lovely."

4) After the eating episodes unit had just concluded, I mentioned the BBC show "Supersize vs Superskinny" to my group, and the head of the photography department made a note on her iPhone to watch it.