Andrew – Interview 24
Andrew had a ‘normal’ childhood but lost his leg in an accident aged 17. Later, he was admitted to psychiatric hospital aged 23. He became a ‘revolving door’ patient over the next 18 years and was homeless for some of that time. Now he has an MA, is involved in the user movement and enjoys playing guitar.
Andrew says he had been quite normal’ as a schoolboy, going to grammar school and then to university. He had a serious accident when he was 17 and lost his leg. By the time he was 23 he was in quite a bad state’ and was admitted to psychiatric hospital for a short time. He was readmitted two months later and was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Andrew feels that this was precipitated by life events and he wasn’t given the proper psychological and physical help he needed following his accident. He was having difficulty attending classes at university as he couldn’t get around the campus. He also spent a lot of the compensation money for his leg on cannabis, and knows now that there is potentially a link between cannabis use and schizophrenia.
Andrew failed his degree and went home to his father. His parents were divorced, and his father and step-mother had him admitted to an old psychiatric hospital that used to be an asylum. Looking back now he thinks that he would have benefitted from Early Intervention Services. He came home again but had an argument with his father and lived in his car. He stole petrol, but eventually he was caught and was given a probation order. He was readmitted to the same hospital to do industrial therapy, earning ¬¨¬®¬¨¬£1.75 a week packing soap, and every two weeks was given depot injections that caused debilitating side effects. Despite the different backgrounds of the people in the asylum he says they all turned up destitute. After his second admission a nurse had reported that he wasn’t taking his medication and he was put on injections under threat of the crash team’ who held patients down and forcibly injected them. Andrew got on well by and large with the other patients, and has friends from that time today. The food in the asylum he found disgusting. The Depixol injection he received gave him the severe side effect of akathisia severe restlessness. In hospital he would be a model patient’ and get himself discharged, taking up a place in a hostel and sometimes getting a low-paid job. He would save up some money and take off in a car, and end up living rough. He had a job in 1981and bought a house, but then stopped taking injections and became psychotic again. He was made redundant and travelled around Europe for a while. The house he had bought was repossessed and he lived rough again. During this time he was very psychotic and thought that the IRA were lurking in bushes, that the Russians were coming, and that people were signalling in Morse code. These thoughts would occupy [his] every waking moment’. He wanted to escape the injections and he was admitted numerous times between 1974 and 1991.
In 1991 Andrew managed to negotiate with staff that he could have his treatment by tablets and not by injection, and he has taken them regularly until the present day. He has had talking therapies for the last 18 years and has liked the opportunity to discuss, with a third party, events in his life. He received a BA Honours with the Open University, an MA in 1998, and has been heavily involved in user committees. In service user groups he said that the members had to be empowered to do everyday tasks such as cooking and shopping since life was very different from inside asylums. Over the last 10-12 years he has had a great deal of support from his girlfriend and her family, and describes his girlfriend as a rock on which I’ve stood’. He thinks that the term schizophrenia’ has maybe reached the end of its usefulness but that there are many people who suffer from psychosis or delusions, and by abolishing the term schizophrenia you would not abolish these things. Andrew suggests something like perception disorder’ as an alternative.