Schizophrenia and I: An Autobiography

By John Carver

The book sets out to illustrate what can be achieved even with a handicap of mental illness. It is an intriguing true tale of a Life lived with a doubled edged sword of fortune.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Feb 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493141159

John Carver

The author was born in Kenya and came to England for secondary schooling moving to a Polytechnic to study engineering in 1969. In his Final Year he sustained a nervous breakdown with acute schizophrenia. He had a further 7 acute admissions but managed to keep working in-between as an engineer.

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Copyright © 2014 by John Carver.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 02/12/2014

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Childhood

Chapter 2: Welcome To England And Barnard Castle School

Chapter 3: I Start My School Life In Earnest

Chapter 4: I Mature At 16

Chapter 5: Onward To University As An Adult

Chapter 6: Breakdown!

Chapter 7: Back To College Again

Chapter 8: Becoming An Employee

Chapter 9: Living In The Golf Club (1979-1982)

Chapter 10: I Move To Aberdeen

Chapter 11: High Wycombe And Putting Down Roots

Chapter 12: Another Breakdown And A Short Stay

Chapter 13: A Mission And A New Job

Chapter 14: Retirement

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

C atherine Mergounis and Caroline Fudge for the artwork.

Mark Cole for his patient editorship and proof reading.

Bill Goode and Kenneth King for having faith in me.

INTRODUCTION

F or quite some time now I have been very keen to start a book, a book that I hope will be suitable for helping schizophrenics and the like live their lives in a more complete fashion. The background to this comes from my own personal experience of living with schizophrenia for a good 40 years. I think I can say I have been right through the psychiatric mill and come out of the other side leading a fairly full life.

Needless to say I have encountered a lot of people in my troubles and some have been helpful towards me whilst others have hindered me. This also applies to my experience of life, and by nature of the book I will perhaps be generating a biography of my life. Certain names have been changed to save embarrassment, although people will recognise themselves, I am sure.

As far as possible it is a factual book, although some facts may have become a bit jaded with the passage of time. As I write this I have passed my 62nd birthday, and the book mostly spans the period from my 11th birthday until the present. I owe a debt of gratitude to certain friends who have encouraged me and a certain amount of modern technology as well as large amounts of caffeine and nicotine!

It is said that between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 people in this country will have some sort of mental health problem in their lives, so one would expect quite a comprehensive treatment regime to be in place. Well, it is certainly recognised by The NHS as a service which must be provided for, although it tends nowadays to be a crisis intervention service followed by discharge under your GP’s care. If you are considered suitable, and the resources are available, you may get follow-up psychiatric or psychological treatments. However it does seem to be a postcode lottery. Due to constraints of cost and time generally, and primarily, it is drug therapy which is used both by Psychiatrists and GP’s. It can be argued that this is due to Big Pharm or the active promotion of drugs without regard to their efficacy in order to boost commissions and salaries. The big drug companies are well able to mount that sort of offensive. It is my opinion, after much thought, that perhaps the best therapies are the talking therapies, and assessing the patient based on their story rather than how they present at first interview. Listening, alone, can alleviate patients concerns and is to be encouraged. I believe drugs do have their place but one should only accept a drug regime that works for you.

Thus, if you have a mental health problem and find yourself in the system, you can generally expect to be put on medication but probably not really listened to. You may just have one episode and achieve a full recovery and go back to normal. The book is really written for those who have such a persistent problem it can almost be regarded as a handicap. There is a trend now for more psychological treatments and these, hopefully, will mean more patients are able to give their story.

Chapter 1

CHILDHOOD

M y first memory and realisation that I existed occurred in what seemed a dream to me, for it was not a real picture. For I define life as memories, which, in my case, occur as pictures, a bit like a photograph album. This picture was of a pulse in a line moving from left to right, set on a black background. It would seem to be a strange abstract memory and perhaps with hidden meaning, and a very real thing to an electronic engineer if he had seen it on an oscilloscope. Was it a prophecy from God, for in later years I was called to electronics which became second nature to me? I remember the line repeated itself and after the first event I anticipated each next pulse with great foreboding and a disturbing pain. Did this occur at my birth and was the pain my coming out of the womb? I don’t know, but things seemed to quieten down after that for a long time. I write about this unusual experience because it has left an indelible mark on my mind.

My early formative years were spent in Nairobi, Kenya, where I was born and grew up at first. The climate is near ideal there as Nairobi is almost on the Equator and sits at about 5 thousand feet above sea level, which means the nights are pleasantly cool. Remembering early days was not to be a part of my life (as I recall it now) and this could well be the result of Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) carried out on me when I was 21 years old. ECT is a barbaric treatment used to shock people out of a psychiatric disorder in the hope of a cure. It is known to affect memory.

I have two memories or pictures from when I was about six or seven years of age. They are of me in a swimming pool in Nairobi with my father teaching me to swim. I remember I had a plastic ring around me and was enjoying the water, if a little apprehensively. I don’t have any recollection of my father’s features and do remember the surrounding children and adults in hazy detail. Another memory of about that time is an event that scared me, for my father who was in the habit of fishing in the streams below Mount Kenya, used to visit a trout farm. He had hoisted me onto his shoulders and was walking along a narrow wall dividing the ponds with me staring down from a great height in terror! There was a photograph of this in the family’s possession, and the image in my mind is very clear as if when it happened I could see myself and my father from the camera’s perspective.

Further vague memories of fishing in the following years are more by family hearsay than real images in my mind except for a much later image from a Kenya fishing camp where we were staying the night and in the early evening a motorcade came past in which was the President in his car. It was none other than Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of Kenya, known as the Father of Kenya.

Sometime in these early years occurred an event which was quite significant but of which I have no recall at all. The first house we lived in had a river at the bottom of the garden, and apparently my sister Jayne fell in, and was in danger of drowning. I got a stick to fish her out and effectively saved her life. The river, naturally, was to feature in play, and was said to be infested with Bilharzia, a dangerous disease harboured by snails in the water. We didn’t take much notice of this and used to wade along the river’s edge. There was a school nearby with an open drain into the river, and we would crawl up this drain (which was clean and dry usually), and spy on the schoolchildren at play. This is a memory which I think was later at a different house when we lived next door to the Leonard family, also on the river, accessed by passing through their garden. I place this memory at age about 7. In this house I once set fire to my bed by stuffing some books down an electric fire. I remember I was locked in the room and threw some vigorous tantrums! When Dad came home I was smacked with a slipper which was far better than being locked up. (In the subsequent years, up into my 30’s, I caused many fires accidentally, by being careless with fire or cigarettes). There was an older boy across the main road I used to play with and we caught a baby Black Mamba snake one day. They are known to be dangerous snakes. We were in his garden and when the gardener saw what we were doing, he immediately got his panga or machete, and destroyed the snake, much to our dismay. I believe a bite from a