SCHIZOPHRENIA AND THE COMMON COLD
“In this engaging, deeply personal, and superbly crafted memoir, Dixon provides a rare first-person account of the mental experiences of schizophrenia and thoughtful reflections on the path to recovery.” Richard J Beninger, author of Life’s Rewards: Linking Dopamine, Incentive Learning, Schizophrenia, and the Mind
Further comments from R. J. Beninger in an email:
“I really liked your book. I enjoyed reading it and was sorry when it finished. I was fascinated by your descriptions of your mental processing during the period of active symptoms. I found your thoughtful reflections on the possible causes of the symptoms and the possible circumstances that led to their remission interesting. On a personal note, as a Canadian who has lived in Ontario, Montreal and Vancouver and travelled quite a lot in Canada including BC and Alberta, I loved the setting of your narrative. I feel so familiar with Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Toronto, and with small-town Canada. Although I have not been to FSJ, I felt like I had because it is so like so many places I have visited or lived in. I was born in 1950 so was also very familiar with the times you describe. I related to your book on many levels. Thank you for giving me the privilege of reading it.
“I thought the text flowed smoothly and loved how you juxtaposed and drew parallels between your early experiences at post-secondary studies and your more recent experiences. Your use of Hassan as a device, as you mentioned in an earlier communication, really worked. It was fortuitous that he came back into your life, and you integrated that effectively into the narrative. Your relationship with your father is tenuous early in the book but gains momentum as the story progresses until he becomes a prominent force in the later chapters. I liked the way you reflected on your personal growth through a consideration of that relationship.” Richard Beninger
______________________
Email from Nigel Bark, MBBC (Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, USA):
“This is your story and it’s well written and grabs attention from the start. It is important to hear what people with schizophrenia experience and what they think about that experience. And I agree with you it is very important for people to know that some do recover from schizophrenia.
Having worked in State Hospitals for 35 years, where the patients were the most severely ill and it could be depressing, I always emphasized to the residents and medical students that not everyone with schizophrenia was like this and that about 30% of people with schizophrenia do recover. But early in the illness we do not know who will recover and who won’t. We certainly should study those who recover to try and find out why, but we should be careful about generalizing from one story – or from many.
Here’s an analogy; by now we’ve all had COVID, maybe a few times even, and it wasn’t so bad, mild symptoms, no big deal. BUT 1.1 million have died from it – and they cannot tell their story. There’s an interesting study from Chicago of people with mainly schizophrenia followed up for now 40 years. After ten years about 10% had recovered and were not taking medication – and they were doing much better than the rest: more likely working and independent. At 20 years it was about 20% recovered. But don’t conclude that it’s better to not take medication. They were not randomized to not take medication. They had a milder illness and, after a while did not need medication.
There have been hundreds of studies in which people were randomized to take or not take (blindly) antipsychotics and all show that those not taking were more likely to relapse – even after 20 years. (They also show that other things also make relapse more or less likely; the atmosphere at home: high expressed emotion contributes to relapse, but being out of the house for 35 hours a week reduces the risk.)
So those are my thoughts (the long aside stimulated by something you said at one of the sessions) I wish you the very best of luck in getting your book published and thank you for sharing it with me.” Nigel Bark
____________________________________
Email from Lauri Tuominen, a neuroscientist at The Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research (IMHR), affiliated with the University of Ottawa:
“I really enjoyed it and I read it out loud to my partner who also liked it. I think you are a good writer. As for the content I thought this is a really important and moving story of hope and recovery. As such I believe it would be very helpful for many patients, families as well as health care professionals. And to anyone who is generally interested in the mind and mental health. It is not often enough that people hear stories like this. Many of the books written by people who have had schizophrenia still appear to suffer at least from some symptoms. I am thinking about The Center Cannot Hold and The Collected Schizophrenias. I think you are right that it might be even a surprise to many psychiatrists. I guess this goes all the way back to Kraepelin who defined schizophrenia (he called it dementia praecox) as something that has a poor outcome. But even in the modern system, once a patient is well enough but perhaps not fully recovered, a psychiatrist might not see them anymore.” Lauri Tuominen
___________________________________________
May 20, 2023 Email from Donald Addington (Professor Department of Psychiatry, University of Calgary; Hotchkiss Brain Institute and Mathison Centre for Research & Education; Department of Psychiatry, Foothills Hospital, Calgary AB: Donald holds the copyright for the English version of the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia (the gold standard measure for assessing depression in schizophrenia) as well as the First Episode Psychosis Services—Fidelity Scale (a measure of teams dealing with psychosis and how well those teams are working.)
“It was great meeting you in Toronto and hearing about your lived experience. Since our meeting I have read the chapters that you gave me and agree that they are well written, interesting, and well worth publishing.” (May 20, 2023) A subsequent email: “Thank you for inviting me to review selected chapters of Schizophrenia and the Common Cold. The chapters I reviewed were well written and engaging. Psychiatry has over time learnt to value the “Patient Perspective” and find ways to include that perspective in research and service delivery. A well written autobiography is part of that data base..” (May 22, 2023)