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175 in stock
By Initially NO
ISBN: 978-1-84991-782-7
Published: 2012
Pages: 229
Key Themes: Mental Health, Schizophrenia, Art, Psychosis
Description
Initially NO is a visual artist and poet struggling to find a way to earn a living. She had a diagnosis of schizophrenia over ten years ago but hadn’t had any episodes for years. She hates medication and the effects it has on health and well-being so she stopped taking it for seven years. She likes to hear voices in the sound of a car’s roar as much as she likes finding lyrics in her guitar chords. But things start to become strange when her father dies. She starts to believe that her DNA has been used in an electronic experiment. Nothing anyone says will change her mind. She is hospitalised for this and realises her mistake. Then she stops the medication and returns to the same belief and psychosis!
This book shows how a person can slip into such beliefs that seem strange and non-sense to most of the population and gives a mind’s eye view.
About the Author
Initially NO has studied Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University. She is also a visual artist. The name Initially NO is derived from the author’s birth name which had the Initials, NO. It is now her legal name. She has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. This means she has gone into a dream state, not unlike while sleeping. The dream gradually turned into a nightmare and she found herself doing all sorts of things that she would only do if in a dream. Part of her mind was fast asleep and believing in the symbols her mind dreams of. If you put your foot in cold water, in a dream it feels cold. If knives go through you in a dream, they hurt. While having a waking dream, things hurt as well as felt cold, for strange reasons the mind made up. Initially NO has been having these episodes of illness where she hears voices and has tactile hallucinations, since she was twenty-five. She is hoping that it doesn’t happen again.
Book Extract
Dad was lying on the hospital bed, golden from the jaundice, his mouth open as if in awe. This wasn’t something I could take a photo of. Something said that it was not okay. Even though Vin pulled hair follicles out, taking a photo of my Dad without him being alive was just not something I could do. I needed something to represent him though. I found it in a little gold laughing Buddha on the shelf at the family home. Long ago Mum had chastised Dad for liking the fat laughing Buddha, when she preferred the thin serene serious ones, but she’d since come to understand the reason why laughter was so important and kept the laughing figurines around the house.
Later, when I woke up around five am (the hour my Dad would normally wake) the heavens had opened, watering the garden beautifully. It was another symbol to collect.
‘Just put me in the compost,’ Dad had said. We did our best to make his funeral environmentally friendly. We couldn’t exactly go with his wishes and I don’t know if I’d be okay with having my dad’s corpse in the compost bucket being devoured by earth worms. Yet for some reason I had to be okay with him being cremated, even though that was an environmental hazard.
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Glenn Floyd (verified owner) –
This is an excellent read for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, peer-support workers and other practitioners of mental health. It is also enormously accessible for those will lived-experience of mental illness. By having a good read, you will gain understanding of how psychotic episodes occur. You can look into a aspect of humanity that is not often well recorded in a way that is intelligible, that thing being paranoid manic psychosis. It is also a very entertaining memoir with fantastic illustralions. very funny at times, but a very serious subject; a great resource!