Ceridwen – Interview 01
In 2001 Ceridwen was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Having previously being sectioned and having spent time in an in-patient hospital, Ceridwen now lives with her brother and hopes soon to live independently with support from her family. Ceridwen does volunteer work and attends college.
Ceridwen started having symptoms when she was 12 and had a full breakdown when she was 13. She heard persecutory voices and tried to commit suicide twice in her teens. She has been blind since birth and was badly bullied at the blind school that she attended. After this, she went to a mainstream school where she had a better experience. Her mother had her exorcised at the age of 14 as she thought she was possessed; she first saw an educational psychologist at the age of 15, who she thought at the time didn’t make any sense. When she first heard voices she thought there were nasty people in the house and didn’t understand why she couldn’t find them. Her voices take the form of four men, whom she doesn’t know, and who are horrible to her. At first, Ceridwen didn’t talk to anybody about her voices and had a tendency to lash out at people who she thought were going to hurt her. She used to set fires when she was young as it gave her a sense of control. Despite this, Ceridwen performed well in her A’ levels and went to university. In her second year, someone she knew found her wandering down the road in her nightdress. He escorted her to hospital where she was sectioned.
During her time in hospital she was given ECT, which she thought was barbaric, and her drugs were changed every week. She remembers being scared in hospital, as she thought there were a lot of people who were really ill, paranoid and angry. She described the ward as dirty and unfriendly; however she made two friends in this unit. Since this first admission she has been admitted to another in-patient unit, which was clean, and she found the nurses were well trained. After trying various medications she was finally given Clozapine, which controlled her symptoms, but she wasn’t warned this might lead to dramatic weight gain. The drugs, combined with the lack of exercise in an in-patient unit, meant her weight went up to 17 stone during this time. After a period in an in-patient unit, Ceridwen saw a GP with whom she had a good relationship. However, her community psychiatry nurse was unreliable and would sometimes not contact her for weeks. Currently she is on Clozapine and Aripiprazole and has been stable for 9 months. She says Clozapine can make her dribble and she now has to be careful about her weight. Ceridwen also takes Gabapentin for pain which, in combination with the Clozapine, can make her drowsy.
Since moving to another area, she has had a key worker who taught her to swim; this helped her manage her weight and improve her confidence. Currently she has a consultant at a local hospital with whom she has a good relationship. Her brother now stays with Ceridwen on a temporary basis, and she has had good support from her step-dad since her mother died when Ceridwen was in her early 20s.
Her step-dad encouraged her to go to a college where she has learnt to do crafts and she socialises with the other people. She has been attending this college for nearly seven years. Ceridwen has also done a cookery course that she enjoyed greatly. Currently, she is supposed to be receiving psychological counselling to talk about painful childhood experiences, but hasn’t received any despite asking for this. At first she fought the diagnosis of schizophrenia, but now finds that what she reads about disorganised schizophrenia’ fits exactly what she experienced. Since the time of interview, Ceridwen has been taken off Clozapine, because her white blood cell count was too low and she suffered a severe chest infection.