Andrew shares his experience of schizophrenia
26 February
Andrew now writes about his mental health condition and produces digital art.
Mrs Thatcher helped turn my life around
I’M lucky to be one of the schizophrenics in Britain who have benefited from medication — and I never thought I’d praise Margaret Thatcher, but I’m also lucky that she came along and closed down the old asylums.
One in 100 people in this country is diagnosed with schizophrenia — around 600,000 people. I’ve had it since 1974, and for many years people like me were put in asylums.
Since Mrs Thatcher closed those places down in 1990 with the Community Care Act, I’ve been able to interact with my community and haven't been an inmate.
But between 1974 and 1990, I was a revolving-door patient, constantly being readmitted.
In the popular mind, Margaret Thatcher is associated with the Miners‘ Strike and the Poll Tax, but I have her to thank for finally giving people like me a decent life in the community.
I'm well aware that if I hear the word schizophrenia on the news or see it in the papers, the next sentence is going to talk about a murder and a breakdown in community care.
You never hear it in any other context, so it's fair to say I don't run out in the street the next day, telling people, “Hey, guess what, I've got a mental health condition and it's schizophrenia!"
I think it would be good if the word was replaced with something else now, in the same way we don't say folk are “mentally handicapped” or “spastic”.
The connotations are too bad for most people, and it's prejudicial.
In Holland, they're already calling it Perception Disorder.
The condition isn't all about hearing voices or seeing things.
In my case, it can be thinking that random events apply particularly to me, which makes me feel very paranoid.
You might think you're Jesus, or the Russians are coming, or there's Morse signalling going on, when in fact it's just background noise.
It's when your sense of perception is disordered that you get confused.
You become totally convinced things such as items on the news are about you.
By the time you're in a full-blown episode, there's no voice of reason telling you not to be daft.
You totally believe they apply to you.
So, you feel anxious, stressed out, scared something is going to happen to you, and quite often I would neglect myself.
In the old asylum days, I ended up living as a vagrant, not washing my clothes or brushing my teeth or getting assistance.
The injections we were given made you extremely restless and yet feel very sedated at the same time.
I would be a “model patient" to get myself discharged and not take the injection.
But within months, I'd be psychotic again and having a brush with the law.
They would take me back to the asylum and go through the same hopeless routine.
I’ve been under Section on three occasions, and I had about 12 admissions to the old asylums.
Schizophrenia doesn't go away, but I can live my life now.
I still tend to be very selective about who I talk to, especially if I think they'll have negative views.
But I’ve put on art exhibitions and music events linked to mental health, which got mentioned in the papers.
I've never been harassed or had people be rude to me. Most are welcoming and friendly and thank me for speaking out about it.
When I lost my dole money in my vagrant days, I went to a church and they gave me a tenner to keep me going.
I still go to the Church of England, and you don't forget when people were there to help you.
I'm almost 60, so I don't have a lot of productive life left, but I live in hope.
I'm a member of a registered social enterprise, which might provide some gainful activity for me!
Recently, I've been inspired by the power of narrative and I've written down some of the delusions I had when I was last very psychotic.
These were put together and published by Chipmunka Publishing as The Durham Light and Other Stories.
I’ve moved on to doing Pictures of Difficult Things.
Most people don't realise that in the old days, they would give you an injection in the backside every two weeks, which caused me horrendous side effects.
So, I have done stick pictures of the injections, as it was an awful experience because it was so personal.
They're cartoon slideshows that tell a story, and you can see them on the internet.
There are links between mental illness and creativity but, of course, it would be much more preferable not to have a history of mental illness but still be creative.
In the old days, when I didn't take my medication, I felt quite elated and stayed awake for days and nights, thinking it was great not to have those dreadful injections.
But I have taken my pills for 20 years now and feel good.
The thing I take now is called Atypical Anti-Psychotic Medication, which has fewer side effects than anything I've known, so I have no reason not to take it.
And, if people's attitudes to mental illness improves, too, my life will certainly be a lot better than it was in those bad old days.
As told to Craig Campbell
You can see Andrew's cartoons at www.andrewsasylumlife.co.uk
Visit shift.org.uk to find out more about mental health issues.
