I live with paranoid schizophrenia, as did my mother. My mother’s condition worsened due to her inability to admit she had psychiatric problems and the failure of her doctors to handle her denial. She became labeled as “mad.” The character Jodie in my book “The Overlife, A Tale Of Schizophrenia” has a similar fate. My real mother and the fictional Jodie would have loved to be labeled a “dancer” rather than an “insane person.” In her twenties, my real mother attained a level of classical ballet to be sought after by several ballet companies in Australia. She was passionate about dance. She transmitted that passion to me, even though I was too naturally clumsy to become a dancer myself. As her psychiatric condition worsened, only I remembered that she was a dancer first and foremost, and her conversations with me about dance were her only link to that past of which she was so proud. She expected me to retain her story and the anecdotes about all the colorful characters she encountered in her dance career. It was pleasurable work.
It is important to remember that a mental illness or brain disorder diagnosis does not define the person who lives with it. Their psychiatric problems may be essential in managing their lives, but there is always much more to them than that.