General Gripes

I thought I would let some of you other sufferers or indeed the medical profession and everyone else know what it has been like for me to deal with the side effects and other problems of schizophrenia. Please feel free to email me with any of your own experiences.

Public Health Warning 
"Depression" is a euphemism used to describe a terrible illness which leaves the sufferer at risk of suicide. In severe depression each thought comes with a hundred ton weight attached. In the case of the author the illness is caused by the majority of drugs prescribed, with impunity, for schizophrenia. For psychiatrists it is socially acceptable to put relentless pressure on patients to take these drugs. Indeed the law even allows them to introduce these drugs into the patient's bloodstream without their consent even on one occasion with me by force and otherwise with the threat of force. Changes in the law to force more patients in the 

Clive Hathaway Travis, Bedford ca 1965

Me, Bedford, Ca 1965, unaware of what

lay ahead for me in my adult life

community to take these drugs will result in both an increase in suicides and vagrancy as patients escape the murderous and offensively oppressive regime which many are now subject to, particularly where the older drugs are concerned. The majority of the drugs available for paranoid schizophrenia can cause clinical depression as a side effect. Patient information leaflets simply say "depression" amongst the list of other, often extremely unpleasant side effects, and no warning is offered, either on the leaflet or by the prescribing psychiatrist. A cigarette packet-style health warning should be printed on the patient information leaflet. Clive H Travis, February 2003. 
"Schizophrenia is a cruel disease: its treatments are too often toxic", Schizophrenia Association of Great Britain Newsletter No.38, summer 2004. 

New Drugs 
The above may seem rather alarming. Well I was the one who went through this and I can assure you it was worse than that! Believe me you don't want to know how bad it was! However my experience, I hope, is now less likely to happen. This is because at least 3 of the new drugs do not list depression as side effect. However it has to be said that Seroquel and Clozaril were impossible for me to take on an ongoing basis. For example Seroquel gave me terrible abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea - it gave me irritable bowel syndrome! It also temporarily paralysed a muscle in my top lip: it gave me a stiff upper lip! Still, though highly insidiously, I  was on  Olanzapine for 15 years and though I'd have preferred not to have had  to take it financial interests in the wrong places dictated I continued to do so. It's wasn't bad at all to take though, just making it a bit harder to get up in the morning, redundant on the procreative side and another drag on the economy. 

My Current Medication Regime

I never see my GP these days except about non mental health matters and have not been on the mental health team books for some years and when I last saw them I was told the only reason I was still on the hospital books was that I was precious to my consultant as I'd recovered. He wanted to own me. I stopped the Olanzapine 2 years ago, having learnt about Open Dialogue, noticing a recovery in my cognitive ability and renewed interest in procreating.