"Most people do not understand illnesses like Schizophrenia and some probably never will."
In this brave and harrowing guest post, Nicola Hynds has shared her journey with us. She has used her real name and picture for this post, explaining to Her.ie that in the future she would love to become a campaigner for mental health services and awareness. This is her first public account of her story.
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When I was a little girl, as young as four, and at my grandparent’s house I would walk up and down the hall looking at all the pictures and paintings. They used to move around and I was always scared that one day they would jump out and grab me. I started seeing shadows walking around at night, and I had a constant noise in my head; people talking, whispering, singing and shouting, even arguing with each other. I didn’t tell anyone, they couldn’t know because I thought I was a freak. As time went on, I felt sad all the time. I was paranoid about people being able to read my mind and I felt like there was someone standing over my shoulder all the time, constantly watching me.
My parents brought me to various professionals. They knew I just wasn’t right. I couldn’t tell them what was going on though, out of fear of something bad happening. One child psychologist told my mother to take me home as trying to treat me was a waste of time, “like talking to a brick wall.” She persisted though and just before entering my teens I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and some slowed cognitive functioning. I got through the teenage years but with great difficulty, I struggled in school and self harmed on a daily basis. I cut myself with razors, scissors, safety pins and sometimes knives.
In my late teens I tried to end my life. I took an overdose of sleeping tablets. When I woke up in hospital I was naturally bombarded with questions as to why. I tried to pull medical equipment out of my arms, I tried to leave but I ended up being put in the psychiatric ward. I tried to explain what had been happening to me but so much had built up, I was so tired and I couldn’t get the words out right. They came out all mixed up. The doctor told me I was attention-seeking, that there was nothing wrong with me, I wasn’t even mildly depressed and I was probably just an emotional teenage girl who thought self harming scars were "like a cool trophy". That doctor to this day is a well recognised psychiatrist and is a key speaker at many universities and seminars regarding the importance of recognising mental health difficulties. He set me back years.
I was discharged after just a couple of days and sent home to pretty much get over myself. The next few months saw me get myself a boyfriend (whom I’m now living with and marrying), scrape through the leaving cert and head off to a College of Further Education. I lost a lot of friends through what I did to myself with the overdose. They didn’t understand and they were angry with me. The years went on and I tried to get on with my life. I found this very hard. I tried to go back to the doctor and explain how I was feeling and he put me on anti-depressants making sure to remind me that I really didn’t necessarily need them as I was fine.
I got worse and worse. The voices never ceased, not even for a second. I felt like there were people watching me, I couldn’t see them but I could feel their presence at all times. I was convinced people could dip in and out of my mind whenever they felt like it and listen to my thoughts. I believed they were all conspiring against me, laughing at me and trying to harm me. I was withdrawn completely at times, suspicious of everyone. I was failing to get a grasp on the real world. I would feel so sad and lost, everything seemed empty and I felt so alone. Then I would suddenly become happy, euphoric, and ecstatic with everything in my life, I would get loads of ideas and feel like taking on the whole world. My mind would race with thoughts I couldn’t quite keep up with. And then I’d crash and feel horribly depressed again.
Little quirks of mine developed into obsessive compulsive habits. I had to touch a certain object a certain amount of times, tap my fingers off each other continuously or make noises or twitch a little. I’d get sudden urges to do dangerous things like jump from a great height. But at the same time I was really anxious and nervous about going into a shop to buy milk or making a phone call. I found speaking a struggle as my speech was disorganised and I would stutter and stumble over my words. No matter how I was feeling I found it hard to stay still or concentrate on anything. I went through phases of binge drinking, eating too much or too little. I felt physically sick most days, had great trouble sleeping and smoked constantly.
In my twenties I finally had a breakdown and ended up in A&E followed by a private clinic and then a psychiatric hospital. I told them everything. They let me take my time and asked lots of straight forward questions which made it easier for me to get it all out. They told me that as hard as it was to hear they knew I was suffering from a mental illness and they suspected it to be Schizoaffective Disorder, a combination of Bi-polar Disorder and Schizophrenia.
I started an in-patient treatment programme for psychosis. I was given daily medication of anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxieties and a dose of other drugs. The side effects were horrific. They caused me to rapidly gain weight, have vivid nightmares and feel faint and dizzy. I had stiff pains which were agonising. I would go through phases of feeling chronically tired or suffer from insomnia. I felt nauseous and my speech was very slurred. My eyes had trouble focusing and my peripheral vision was gone. My hands shook and I was extremely restless. I couldn’t even manage a minute of sitting still and eventually developed Restless Leg Syndrome which caused my legs to move uncontrollably. I was at one point due to a mix-up between doctors taken off a tablet which I needed. I suffered a withdrawal from this and a reaction to my anti-psychotics which caused an episode where I lost all rational thought and functioning, but giving me an emergency dose of the drug I was withdrawing from thankfully put an end to this.
My treatment included programmes involving group discussions, cognitive behavioural therapy and mental health education. As time went on I learned how to cope better and was discharged as a patient and went home. Getting back to the ordinary world was a struggle, I was institutionalized and had missed so much back home over the summer but I had a chance to finally get better, my problems were no longer a secret and I felt relieved that I finally had an explanation. I made great friends while in hospital and still miss them but the real world was calling. My medication was reduced enough that I could drive my car again; drink a little bit of alcohol and my eventual diagnosis was Schizophrenia on its own. My psychosis continued but I was better equipped to deal with it.
I have had many setbacks in the last few years, lost countless friends and felt many times like I couldn’t go on. I have gotten through it, sometimes by the skin of my teeth but I’m still here. I have been discriminated against and treated like I chose this life. Most people do not understand illnesses like Schizophrenia and some probably never will. Severe mental illnesses like mine are betrayed badly in the media, on television and in the film industry. There is a huge stigma surrounding mental illness and the mental health system is for the most part, a joke. People are dying through suicide; at times because others are uneducated about illnesses that affect such a large number of the population. I hope this can change and that my story can give someone an insight into the world of psychosis and show that we’re not monsters, unpredictable and dangerous, we are just a little sick.
A huge thank you to Nicola for bravely sharing her story. If you have a life experience you would like to talk about on these pages, please get in touch. You'll find us on hello@her.ie 
