Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, a Father and Son's Story

#753
Title: Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, a Father and Son's Story
Authors: Patrick Cockburn & Henry Cockburn
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2011
255 pages

A reasonable example of its genre, and with the added interest of Henry's and (uncredited in the authorship) his mother's writing in addition to father Patrick's. A useful addition to family memoirs about schizophrenia because of the minor but repeated emphasis on the deleterious effects of marijuana on people vulnerable to psychosis.

In its best moments, it's absorbing and sad; at worst it's sometimes confused about where to direct its anger. I certainly empathize with the author's frustration about the insecurity of secure facilities, though for one I think his vision of the security of pre-community mental health facilities is a romantic one (his son might well have spent his days tied to a bed prior to the advent of medication). Having worked on a unit where a patient kicked his way out through a barred metal door and absconded over a tall fence, I also know that someone bent on escaping will manage to do so unless their right to any freedom is abrogated. In terms of rights, it interests me that Henry seems not to have been tried on older medications (they have higher side effect profiles, but work well for some people), nor, until they began powdering his cozapine, did he appear to really have a successful trial (and given the frequency with which he smokes marijuana, I'm not convinced he's had a totally clean trial yet). I also wonder, given the sometimes manic flavor of his episodes, if he was ever tried on lithium or Depakote, but hey, I'm not a medical doctor and this is idle speculation on my part.

Read with The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness for another perspective on British mental health care, and with Hunt's Mental Hospital and Rosalynn Carter's Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis for an early perspective on the miracle of antipsychotic medication, and a contemporary perspective on the failure of adequate community-based mental health care.