![]() ![]() For most people, prolonged social isolation is all bad, particularly mentally. We all want to be alone from time to time, to escape the demands of our colleagues or the hassle of crowds. “At one point, I heard someone screaming, and it wasn’t until I felt the hands of one of the friendlier guards on my face, trying to revive me, that I realised the screams were my own.” ![]() “In the periphery of my vision, I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that nothing was there,” she wrote in the New York Times in 2011. One of the most disturbing effects was the hallucinations. She endured almost 10,000 hours with little human contact before she was freed. Accused of spying, they were kept in solitary confinement in Evin prison in Tehran, each in their own tiny cell. That summer, the 32-year-old had been hiking with two friends in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan when they were arrested by Iranian troops after straying onto the border with Iran. ![]() She heard phantom footsteps and flashing lights, and spent most of her day crouched on all fours, listening through a gap in the door. Sarah Shourd’s mind began to slip after about two months into her incarceration. ![]()
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