Schizophrenia Who Cares Book

Description

Best known as a travel writer rather than a mental health care campaigner, the author of the original Rough Guide to France and The Rough Guide to Paris tells the moving story of his son’s – and thus his own – 20 year struggle with schizophrenia. Tim believes passionately that it needed to be told, for the “outside” world –  and he includes many of the professionals in that – know little of the daily reality of living with schizophrenia.  He dedicates this frank, no-holds-barred account to all those who find themselves in the same boat, both sufferers and relatives, all of whom, once this bizarre illness strikes, find themselves thrown into a chaotic situation that is always bewildering and often as down-right terrifying as it is heart breaking.

His story includes his dealings with the care services, “a pretty shameful record of incompetence, buck-passing and lack of communication and coordination” and the mental health charities, whom he has not spared – “for in their devotion to the sloppy, evasive language of political correctness, they have dangerously underplayed the seriousness of real mental illness like schizophrenia”.