I got a strange idea when I saw an episode of House today. It was about him being shot and put to sleep with ketamine during surgery. After this he finds himself going a little crazy, hallucinating and never really knowing when he is in the real world or in something his head made up. He then realizes that nothing of what he is experiencing is real, but he is still stuck in this twisted world, where he knows everything everyone is about to say, because technically he is the one saying it, until he takes such action that his doped up brain (he thinks) just cannot accept. Something that really defines the impossible and unreal. So he slices up a guy with a robot surgeon. He has now discovered that EVERYTHING since the accident (maybe a week earlier) has been a hallucination or a dream, and he wakes up lying on a bed rolling to the emergency, only seconds after he was shot.

At one point in the episode, he asks a fellow patient (or rather himself) HOW to know if he is in the real world or an imagined one. The other character didnt come with a very interesting answer, but I just wanted to shout to him "DO THE NOSE REALITY CHECK!!"

Could this RC not also work for the mentally ill? If they find themselves in a nightmarish reality that just cant be real, but it is and they are awake (but perhaps not fully "there", as in the same room) try a nose RC and see what happens?

t definitely wouldnt work for everyone, since some patients are fully concious and physichally and sensorically functional, but for those who gets stuck in daydreams and "wakes up" in a completely different place, kind of like a false awakening. It doesnt even have to be the nose RC (though I believe its the most useful) but any RC, whatever fits the illness and patient the best.

Am I completely nuts? Has this method been applied in mental illness treatment?