About Living With Schizophrenia
Living with schizophrenia was launched in 2013 in the UK to provide a platform for those living with schizophrenia in the wider sense: sufferers, carers and relatives, to try to bring a fresh insight to the subjects of schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorder and to provide information about the condition to all those living with it. We hope also that the information in these pages will be of use to those working in the field of mental health and will help to improve awareness of the condition in wider society.
Although there has been great progress in our understanding of these conditions over the years and in the treatment options available there are still significant gaps in understanding amongst professionals and in the wider public and particularly in the media.
Furthermore in the long history of this condition, our human understanding of it has necessarily involved many twists and turns and sheer dead ends and today’s ongoing research work is no exception. Of any mental health condition, schizophrenia is the one which seems to attract more abstract, misguided and downright potty notions than any other and as a society we often struggle to see through this haze of misinformation to the hard, evidence-based facts on which an individual’s true recovery can be based.
Although there are a number of mainstream mental health websites which do good work, they cannot bring a sufficient depth of understanding to the unique experiences and challenges that only people with direct experience of this complex and often cruel condition can possess. Living with schizophrenia will therefore try to always reflect the views and experiences of those who have lived with the condition: not only the sufferers themselves but also their relatives, carers and friends.
Whilst some elements of the mental health field in the UK are comprehensively resourced there are other areas in which we are failing to deliver. In the areas of recovery and rehabilitation in particular insufficient resources and limited ambitions are holding us back in providing really good social outcomes for the majority of people living with schizophrenia.
Living with Schizophrenia will seek to provide first hand knowledge whilst also challenging the stigma and myths that surround this condition. In particular we will try to provide information that will help those living with schizophrenia to overcome the wide divide that exists in the UK today between adequate clinical outcomes and poor social ones.
Whilst we do not recommend any particular form of treatment we will always seek to promote only lifestyle choices and treatment options that will contribute towards a full and enduring recovery and we will not shy away from discussing those difficult aspects of this condition such as suicide and homicide that cause so much misunderstanding.
Living with Schizophrenia hopes to bring new thinking to bear on what is probably one of our society’s most challenging health issues.
