I thought these vicious voices would never go nor the hallucinations and that there was no hope for me whatsoever. I have only hallucinated once whiles on medication. There is a huge stigma attached to mental health. When people hear that someone has Paranoid Schizophrenia straight away they jump to conclusions and think that person is dangerous but that is not the case. I heard a voice saying I was perfect one night in January from my own sitting room in my house in Wexford. I believe the whole country knows I said that because there is something in the TV that transmitted that out to every other person in the country and everyone does this strange weird noise with their throat on purpose and they do a fake cough towards me and every time someone scratches themselves that is directed at me too even though they might just be doing it to relieve an itch.
The weird noise with the throat, the fake cough and the scratching annoys me too but I have to control my anger whenever this happens and try not let it get to me. The voices are manageable enough but they still annoy but not as much as they used to and likewise with the paranoia. Sometimes a change in environment makes the voices worse and can cause me to hallucinate but I have only hallucinated once since I have been on medication and that was due to a change in an environment. Listening to music helps me too as it drowns out the voices. I find going for long walks whiles listening to music is very beneficial to me as it helps to relax me.
I have just finished attending a psychotherapist in Dublin and I have regular meetings with my psychiatrist in Summerhill mental health clinic in Co. I am currently seeing a psychologist. I even went back playing soccer with my local soccer club Carne FC in August In the middle of my Rehabilitation process the Psychiatrist in Tusnua let me go back for the soccer trainings which was great and I was allowed to go back home to my home house in Wexford at the weekends whiles in Rehab which was good too as I was allowed go to the soccer matches with my local soccer club on a Sunday morning.
Wexford, 4 times a week. I started here on the 23rd November and continue to attend this to this day. It helps the mentally ill as there are different activities to do during the day. Back in January, February and March there would be no way in hell that I could do any of these. Although I would like to have a full time job and that is what I am aiming for but as of right LINK is a good option for me because I am trying to deal with something that has an effect on my life as regards voice hearing and paranoia.
This was a massive step for me to do this as I am still hearing voices but I got through it. I have applied to do a course in creating positive mental health in which I hope to start sometime in the future. I have made lifelong friendships with these people. There is one girl in particular who has helped me a lot and it would be wrong of me not to mention her. Paranoid Schizophrenia Psychosis is bad whatever way you look at it. But you just have to keep your head up and things will get better because there is hope and I am living proof as I have come a long way since January, February and March when I attempted to take my own life twice.
I am playing soccer every week and have gone back hurling this year too. This started after one of my best friends, William Tyrrell, died earlier this year and that just added to my paranoia. I would like to dedicate this piece to my friend William. Meath dad shares story and urges more to 'reach out' this Christmas. It did and it still does. Look, I still experience to this day the effects of that, and it can be very subtle. But you see all the subtle differences, the way that people look at you differently.
Certainly meeting people in my social life I need to be really careful—do I tell them that I have schizophrenia? Because I can really feel that space change. Part of my experience of schizophrenia was a very odd dress sense—boy was it strange, it was way out there. I burned them all. But for Mum and Dad I think, you know, this is a characteristic of schizophrenia, they struggled with that, really struggled with that on different levels.
She was my homey in that sense, because she knew what was going on. Stigma also certainly has also affected the way that I approach my working life, my career and certainly now you know I hold probably a lot more self-stigma I think in that space, yeah. And I went on this medication and it was within a matter of a couple of months that things started to change.
So there are a lot of factors there; you know, the social, psychologically, you know the ground was fertile for a new medication to come in. Brendon Clarke, and more from him later. So a lot of work in genetics has actually failed to come up with genes to cause schizophrenia. But what we are finding is quite interesting is I work at looking at the molecular characteristics of the human brain, so sub-cellular.
Just explain why that is? So the best analogy I can give you is diabetes. And then of course we know there are two quite distinct versions of diabetes, the Type 1 which affects younger people and Type 2 which affects older people. The way schizophrenia is diagnosed at the moment, which is expert clinicians identifying symptom profiles, it means that what we know from our laboratory work is that there is a number of different mechanisms that will generate those symptoms.
So the people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia do not have a uniform biological disease as we understand it, which in turn is why some people with schizophrenia will respond well to a certain drug and another person will respond badly to it. You have to understand I think that all the drugs that are currently being used in psychiatry have been discovered by serendipity.
What have you found out about schizophrenia using these techniques? So what we showed many, many years ago and we published first in was that people with schizophrenia have a decreased level of a protein in the brain called muscarinic receptor, M1 receptor.
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So what we suggested from our research was that in fact if you were able to stimulate these receptors then you would have hopefully a treatment for cognitive deficit in schizophrenia. Unfortunately it had some very unpleasant side-effects, as many drugs do, so it will never go into the clinic. But that successful trial has now stimulated another group of people to generate a whole new generation of compounds which should have the cognitive benefits without the side-effects because the drug is more specific. Those drugs are actually going to go, hopefully, into human trials within two or three years.
I think without a doubt me sitting in my laboratory beavering away on this protein for 15 years really needs input from outside. This is a very severe deficit and it isolates a subset of people within that syndrome of schizophrenia. Her work involves the translation of the neuroscience to the lived experience of her patients, and to identify the most appropriate and effective services for them. Thank you very much for inviting me here, and I was absolutely impressed with what you said, Brendon.
We need to get that sorted as well. Just tell us a little bit more about that. When we look at the age of first-time schizophrenia, there is a difference between men and women in that men present about almost eight years younger, so you tend to see first episode schizophrenia in young men—16 to 19 years of age. And these are findings worldwide. So of course after puberty women have massive rises of oestrogen and that is perhaps protecting them from becoming sick earlier in their lives. And at the menopause bump in the mid 40s to late 40s they lose that protection of oestrogen, so uncover this second if you like 'at risk' time for women.
We also know that women who have had babies, in their post-natal period are at greater risk of both post-natal depression and post-natal psychosis. But really we need to be able to focus on different approaches for men and women, and personalise the understanding of the impact that the disease has had for the person, and gender is an important part of that person, because that then allows us to plan a treatment strategy that is better targeted for that individual.
What have you found out about that? Cannabis, marijuana, is a potent psychosis making drug. So in some people who are genetically vulnerable, cannabis can precipitate schizophrenia. And this is where we have the issues of genetic and other vulnerability. Yeah, it has, thank goodness. The idea is that even in the first acute episode and in every subsequent acute episode of schizophrenia, that you start thinking recovery from the time the person is actually there in the ward or in the acute community settings.
So for a long time it was about getting rid of the voices.
What is the really important part is to actually start off by saying to the person, just like everybody, you want to succeed in work and love. So we apply that same concept. And that all starts, the thinking starts from the time that a person is diagnosed with a mental illness. Art can often play a valuable role in the lives of people who experience schizophrenia by helping them in the recovery process and by addressing the stigma associated with the illness.
It was founded by psychiatrist Dr Eric Cunningham Dax in the s and he invited a professional artist to facilitate art programs for his patients. Emma Last is the education officer here at the Dax Centre. I think that it was quite visionary in a way, because through coming together to look at art it enables us to reflect on the experiences of people who have had an experience of illness in a kind of almost a meditative way.
Okay well we have so many different artists represented in our collection and you know for some people they are just absolutely driven to create work. They have often found that their illness has really got in the way of them creating to the level that they would want to. But I guess quite simply, art-making gives them a sense of purpose in life. They are just driven to create, they may want to sort of share it with the Dax Centre so we can use it to tell their story, so that their story gets out to a larger audience.
And through that we begin to know more about schizophrenia. And I think putting that together we get a very full picture of a life. You know, a life living with illness but just generally a life. Is there valuable information that psychiatrists and mental health professionals can draw from this art?
Yeah, we have so many health professionals that come through the gallery, and we have many medical students who come through the gallery. Training is a big part of what we do. They can really stand back and just look at what is this person saying about their experience. And I guess that we are asking people to kind of hold those personal stories and then when they are in the wards and working with people, to remember that story and all of that personal information, and for it to perhaps inform the work that they do, their way of approaching things.
The science is moving ahead definitely, the art is also part of the actual bringing to life the person with the illness. We absolutely frown on the term 'schizophrenic'. But I still think waving the neuroscience flag is going to actually improve the outcomes.
My life and journey with paranoid schizophrenia | Irish Examiner
That means also funding the research in the area better. We can get at treatment-resistant schizophrenia. My head is spinning. You know what, where my hope lies Thanks to our panellists today: Go to the All in the Mind website from abc.
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Join us too on Facebook and Twitter. It all sounded pretty normal to me. I wanted some more in depth experiential descriptions from your guests. Like, do they ever experience good voices and suggestions from within their psyche as well? I know I do. Kind of makes you understand why we fabricate and protect convention and agreed upon symbols and their meanings. It gives the illusion of solidity and security in a world where there is no ultimate closure in the human effort to describe. It's so big that it's so small, fractal in nature really. Johnson I have found, that many so called pleasant and affirming voices, are as misleading, as aggressive, accusing voices.
This is because I have found, that any voice, which I cannot ascribe to be my own, or that which is actually uttered by another person, can often add to delusions. Any thought needs to be tested, on grounds of reason and evidence. Often the pleasant affirming voices, pander to my ego. Thus they lead to delusion. This does not just apply to schizophrenics. Encouraging to hear experts in the field broadening their view, beyond the biomedical model, of what constitutes mental illness.
Also encouraging to learn that the voices of those with the lived experience of other realities are being taken more seriously. If anyone at the ABC is looking for an idea for a follow-up program, it would be interesting for me to hear a program on what are the current views on what is mental health, what are its causes and how culture-specific is it.
Modifying these will be part of a CURE?? Norman Swan has his faults, but I suggest you run these things past him before publishing such weird assertions. There are many sufferers who will find this whimsy very offensive, and would have obvious grounds for a complaint to be sustained. Lang look at relationships and their impact on the individual and what happens when there are contradictory messages from family and the confusion and undermining of confidence that impacts the patient?
Why are the anti psychotic drugs that are prescribed shortening the lives of the patients and giving them strokes? Do we continue to give penicillin when there is an adverse reaction? No but medication that has major side effects is still prescribed for the schizophrenic patient. Is the deficit because of attrition due to a physiological problem or is the deficit due to medication? Who taught the patients self hate? It's such an intense overwhelming internal dialogue -whose voices give them the particular words that tell them they are worthless and to kill themselves? Is this another example of power and its misuse?
Laing was no doubt right in describing the difficulties experienced within families when a member is psychotic. He just had the arrow of causality the wrong way round. He's also not a great role model.
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These other rhetorical questions reflect an ignorance of the experience of people with psychosis, and especially what the world was like pre Lifetimes spent in asylums, some chained up, all despised. That's where the self-hate originated- in the public bigotry and fear of the "mad". It is cruelly invalidating to suggest that there is nothing wrong with these sufferers, rather it is just some paternalistic conspiracy between "power-misusing" doctors and evil pharmaceutical companies.
The comment is also patently ridiculous in invoking penicillin. Because this wonderful drug has side effects and serious allergies, does not mean that deadly pneumonia, syphilis, septicaemia are 'due to medication'. It is despicable to invoke vulgar Marxism to explain away the suffering of these people. If mental illness involves a physical imbalance in the brain, then why can't people requiring treatment be treated in the same way as all other Australians who are ill.
Instead they are isolated and not treated equally.
We do not have separate hospitals for those suffering from heart disease. We provide them with specialist doctors and access support allied health workers such as physios, etc. All advice given to those suffering with a mental illness is to exercise regularly, eat well, socialise etc. My daughter has been in an adolescent mental health ward four hours drive from our home , for 12 weeks. Like the other year olds they are not treated in the adjoining Children's Hospital, but in an adjoining adult mental health unit.
If staff permits not frequentlay , the children are walked to the children's hospital to access their facilities for one hour a week. As they return to their ward, the drabness of their environment becomes more apparent. Unlike those in the children's hosptial, they do not have their own tv above their bed, they are not allowed access to computer games, telephones or ipods. There is no exercise program, no menu to select items of choice for meals.
Instead they are offered two food choices and if neither are liked they can have a sustagen meal replacement.
Art, science and schizophrenia
There is a small garden, but that is usually locked. Most of the games are old and missing pieces. The children are bored and spend most of the day watching tv. No inspiring visitors drop by. Unlike the children's hospital, there are no volunteers.
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No money donated to the children's hosptial makes it way to these children. Why can't these children who are equally unwell recieve the same treatment? Same goes for adult wards: Your clothes are not locked in a cupboard. Where, oh where, is dignity? Where, oh where, are human rights? As I have had times of illness, which have been diagnosed as schizophrenia, I found the program intensely fascinating.
I was particularly fascinated and very much appreciative of Ms.