One of the most devastating of mental illnesses is schizophrenia, a
partly inherited condition that’s associated with delusions and halluci-
nations (particularly hearing voices), disordered thinking, a flattening
of the emotions and a loss of motivation. In the psychiatric jargon,
the delusions and hallucinations are known as positive symptoms,
whereas the loss of emotion and motivation are known as negative
symptoms. Schizophrenia usually begins in adolescence or early
adulthood. For some people it can manifest itself as a one-off episode
of psychosis – a loose term used to describe the symptom of being
disconnected from reality, including having delusions and hallucina-
tions. For others, it is a life-long illness with an undulating course of
recovery and relapse.
Losing touch with reality
For a glimpse of what it’s like to be psychotic, there are few people better
to ask than Peter Chadwick, a clinical psychologist and psychosis expert
who experienced his own psychotic episode in the late 1970s, leading
him to be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In books and articles,
Chadwick has recalled his youthful social awkwardness, poor emotional
control and the toll of endless bullying for being a transvestite. In his
early thirties, recently fired from a casual filing-job for which he was
over-qualified, he suddenly saw personal meaning everywhere.
The DJ on the radio mocked him; the intensity of the rain on the
windowpane waxed and waned in rhythm with the drama of his diary
writing; and he noticed phrases from private letters he’d written to
friends and relatives quoted on television and by passers-by. “From a
meaningless life, a relationship with the world was reconstructed by me
that was spectacularly meaningful and portentous even if it was horrific”
Chadwick writes in a candid 2007 article. Recalling how his mental crisis