De drabbades egna berättelser om psykisk sjukdom och stroke.

Den brittiske psykologen Peter Chadwick om sitt insjuknande i psykos.
Peter Chadwick hade alltid haft vissa udda drag, men sakta men säkert började han uppleva en tilltagande paranoia och vanföreställningar, som slutade med att han kastade sig under en buss:

"At this time, a powerful idea of reference also overcame me from a television episode of Colombo and impulsively I decided to write letters to friends and colleagues about "this terrible persecution." It was a deadly mistake. After a few replies of the "we've not heard anything" variety, my subsequent (increasingly overwrought) letters, all of them long, were not answered. But nothing stimulates paranoia better than no feedback, and once you have conceived a delusion, something is bound to happen to confirm it. When phrases from the radio echoed phrases I had used in those very letters, it was "obvious" that the communications had been passed on to radio and then television personnel with the intent of influencing and mocking me. After all betrayal was what I was used to, why should not it be carrying on now? It seemed sensible. So much for my bonding with society. It was totally gone. I was alone and now trusted no one (if indeed my capacity to trust people [particularly after school] had ever been very high).

The unfortunate tirade of coincidences that shifted my mentality from sane to totally insane has been described more fully in a previous offering.28(chap 4) From a meaningless life, a relationship with the world was reconstructed by me that was spectacularly meaningful and portentous even if it was horrific. Two typical days from this episode I have recalled as best I could and also published previously.29,30 The whole experience was so bizarre it is as if imprinted in my psyche in what could be called "floodlit memory" fashion. Out of the coincidences picked up on, on radio and television, coupled with overheard snatches of conversation in the street, it was "clear" to me that the media torment, orchestrated as inferred at the time by what I came to call "The Organization," had one simple message: "Change or die!" Tellingly my mother (by then deceased) had had a fairly similar attitude. It even crossed my (increasingly loosely associated) mind that she had had some hand in all this from beyond the grave."

Läs också Scientific American: Minds artikel om att det finns större hopp för psykospatienter än vad många tror.


Tavlor av den schizofrene konstnären Louis Wain som illustrerar hans eskalerande sjukdom.
Louis Wain målade tavlor med katter, men han blev med åren allt mer psykotisk och kattbilderna blev allt mer udda och abstrakta.


Norma MacDonald berättar om att leva med schizofreni.

"There has been so much written about acute schizophrenic illnesses, and there is so much material available on delusions and hallucinations, that I won't go further into those. What I do want to explain, if I can, is the exaggerated state of awareness in which I lived before, during, and after my acute illness. At first it was as if paits of my brain "awoke" which had been dormant, and I became interested in a wide assortment of people, events, places, and ideas which normally would make no impression on me. Not knowing that I was ill, I made no attempt to understand what was happening, but felt that there was some overwhelming significance in all this, produced either by God or Satan, and I felt that I was duty-bound to ponder on each of these new interests, and the more I pondered the worse it became. The walk of a stranger on the street could be a "sign" to me which I must interpret. Every face in the windows of a passing streetcar would be engraved on my mind, all of them concentrating on me and trying to pass me some sort of message."

Texten finns här.


Neuroforskaren Jill Bolt berättar om vad hon upplevde under sin stroke.

Varning för att det blir lite new age-igt på slutet.


Arnhild Lauveng om vägen från psykospatient till psykolog.
Till skillnad från Peter Chadwick gick Arnhild Lauveng från att vara psykospatient för att sedan tillfriskna och bli psykolog. Om detta berättar hon i bokan "I morgon var jag alltid ett lejon" Jag har skrivit om hennes berättelse tidigare i detta inlägg.