Lucinda Richards is a foundation trainee (year 2) at King's College Hospital, London. This work portrays the world as seen by patients with delirium that she has cared for.
‘I wanted to consider how patients with delirium experience a sudden change in how they perceive the world around them. I am especially interested in how objects or people that normally provoke a neutral or positive reaction can become distorted into something terrifying. The terror and hallucinations that can occur in delirium are represented by the larger-than-life insects and the transformation of the seemingly innocent children into something disturbing and sinister. In addition, the juxtaposition of the apparently joyful chain of people with the dark, oppressive flats in the background has the effect of making the expression of joy seem false and fragile. The lightning strike, forming cracks in the architecture represents the destruction of normal brain architecture. The disturbances in temporal and spatial orientation are portrayed by the images of both night and day, and the distortion in the size of the architecture and insects.’
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