Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son’s Story
On a cold February day two months after his 20th birthday, Henry Cockburn waded into the freezing water of Newhaven estuary outside Brighton and tried to swim across, almost drowning in the process. Voices, he said, had told him to do it.
Listen to Henry and Patrick Cockburn, authors of Henry’s Demons discuss their experiences.
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Nearly halfway round the world in Afghanistan journalist Patrick Cockburn learned from his wife Jan that Henry, their son, had been admitted to a hospital mental ward and appeared to be suffering a mental breakdown. Ten days later, Henry was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Thus begins Patrick and Henry’s extraordinary account of Henry’s rapid descent into mental illness and of Patrick’s journey towards understanding the changes in his son.
With striking candour, Patrick writes of the seven years since, years Henry has spent almost entirely in mental hospitals. Victims of schizophrenia are at high risk of committing suicide or killing themselves by accident and Patrick and Jan have lived in constant fear for Henry’s life.
A unique feature of the book is Henry’s own raw and beautiful chapters describing his psychosis from the inside. He relates with great vividness what it is like to hear trees and bushes speaking to him or voices ordering him to escape into the night or plunge into freezing water where he might die. He tells of the waves of unexplained anxiety and guilt which at times have threatened to overwhelm him and his long battle to survive.
Together, Patrick’s and Henry stories create one of the most compelling and nuanced portraits of mental illness ever written and an insight into the courage it takes to survive it.
