This paper is a review of the new and visual PRISM instrument to quantitatively measure suffering. PRISM stands for Pictorial Representation of Illness and Self Measure, and it is applied in medicine as well as in non-health related settings. This study summarizes the results achieved in the application of PRISM by reviewing 52 publications with a total of 8254 participants. The most important point made in the study is that PRISM behaves as a visual metaphor of the relationship of objects (e.g., ‘my illness’) to a subject (e.g., ‘myself’) in a defined context (e.g., ‘my life at the moment’). For this reason, it is a perfect means to express personal information and can thus be applied to evaluate beliefs, attitudes, and decision-making. In medicine, PRISM is of great help to measure patient-reported outcomes and can have several other applications.