Autumn sees the anniversary of the death in 1941 of the great Canadian poet Émile Nelligan who lived with schizophrenia.

Born in December 1879 in Montreal, Canada, Émile Nelligan was a Quebec poet and writer who was considered by some scholars to be the foremost French Canadian poet of his time.  He was said to have had a precocious talent and was publishing work from a very early age.

At around the age of 20 the clouds of psychotic illness started to close over him.  He began to behave oddly to strangers in the street.  He experienced hallucinations and attempted self-harm.  As so often happens with schizophrenia it was his family who realised that something was going wrong and as a result of their intervention he was admitted to the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu psychiatric hospital in Montreal.  This was a relatively new hospital, one of two built at the time in Canada which introduced many new and pioneering methods of treatment.  For instance, it was the hospital’s practice to hold daily case conferences with all the staff on the ward and the doctors actively sought out feedback from the patient’s family.  But unfortunately it was to be another half century before the antipsychotic medicines that have become the mainstay of treatment for schizophrenia nowadays became available.  Sadly, after his breakdown, Émile wrote very little new poetry.

Following his death Nelligan’s poetry became much more popular and his reputation increased. Several schools and buildings in Quebec have now been named after him.

Like so many famous people with schizophrenia, Émile Nelligan’s was a story of what might have been.  Had he been born a decade later he may have had access during his illness to the new antipsychotic medicines that we have today.  But it is clear that in him we have another fine example of a person living with schizophrenia who left an indelible impression on his society.

You can read more about the mental health condition that we call schizophrenia and the struggles of some of the famous people who have suffered with it on the Living with Schizophrenia website at:  https://livingwithschizophreniauk.org/

(Image: Laprés & Lavergne, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Contact us on email at: info@livingwithschizophreniauk.org