Recovered Not Cured: A journey through schizophrenia

by Richard McLean

Overview

Edinburgh, 1994 I am crouching in an alleyway. They can t see me here, so for the moment I am safe. There must be hundreds of loudspeakers projecting secret messages at me, and umpteen video cameras tracking every move I make...They will tie me up, soak my feet in water and have goats lick my feet down to the bone...    Melbourne, 2003 'Nowadays I say that I am recovered, not cured. I have a job, I have my band, I have my friends and my family. I pay my taxes and do the dishes; I'm independent. A couple of pills a day keep me slightly lethargic yet sane . I can live with that.'   Mental illness is common, and often devastating. In this day and age it is a treatable condition, yet many are left untreated, misunderstood. Richard McLean is one of the lucky ones. His words and pictures give us a unique and poignant insight into a hidden, internal world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781741151343
Publisher:	Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited
Publication date:	01/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	832,259
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Richard McLean is a graphic artist/illustrator currently working for the Age newspaper in Melbourne. This is his first book.

Editorial Reviews

McLean is one of the lucky: he journeyed through schizophrenia and survived relatively unscathed. This isn't to say that he didn't experience harrowing times, as voices relentlessly reprimanded him and secret messages defied his interpretive abilities. Nonetheless, with the patient, loving support of family and friends, this gifted Australian graphic artist and writer managed to get psychiatric help and, most significantly, gain access to the drugs that allow him to function without psychosis. Not only does he provide an insider's view of how it feels to be "crazy," but he also supplies numerous graphic illustrations, which mirror his psychological state at different periods. In the tradition of Joanne Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, this is recommended for large public libraries. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Recovered schizophrenic McLean offers a guided tour, complete with images, through the workings of his brain from the onset of his illness to the present day. McLean was a fairly ordinary, albeit artistic, teenager. His friends smoked pot and so did he. They played in bands and later attended university, and so did McLean. But while his friends could use hallucinogenic drugs and then be back to normal the next day, McLean never really left that strange mind-state behind. After graduating, he began growing more and more paranoid, and after an unsuccessful stint living in a bachelor pad with a whole gang of young men, he moved back home with his parents and landed a distinctly mundane job in a warehouse. The ordinariness of his daily life, however, did nothing to mitigate his ever-growing delusions. He would hear the PA system addressing him, read implications and intentionality into every passing license plate, and imagine that there was a giant conspiracy aimed at making him harm himself. McLean's style is uncompromisingly direct and matter-of-fact, with a wealth of detail that opens up the world of a schizophrenic's thoughts without romanticizing the experience. His extensive collections of drawings add another dimension to his tale; images of giant insects with electronic arms, crowds of streetlights, and landscapes composed of faces lend an intensity to his descriptions of feelings of displacement. Interspersed with the text are postings from Internet message boards for those suffering from schizophrenia. These messages from a nameless crowd do even more to underline the oddity and mystery of the disease. McLean's story of eventually finding psychiatric and pharmacological help is toldin the same flat tone as the rest of his story; one day he'd had enough of hearing voices and looked up psychologists in the phone book. A brave, adamantly anti-sensational tale.

Kirkus Reviews