Awards

• Commended for Human Rights Award; Arts Non-fiction category 2003 (Australia)
• Winner of SANE Book of the Year 2004 (Australia)

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. This is a powerful, quirky and important book. Powerful because it goes straight to the heart of battling a psychotic illness. Quirky because of the author's abundant creativity and the delight of his illustrations. Important because it outstrips anything else I have read about schizophrenia for its insight into the nature of psychotic thinking and behaviour. McLean writes with a bold simplicity and deftly avoids melodrama and bathos. Anne Deveson

Full Product Details

9781865089744

Table of Contents

Reviews

'a brave, bold book... opens up a rare window'Highly commended, Human Rights for Arts Non-fiction prize 'profoundly thought-provoking and very readable...valuable for anyone needing or wanting to know more about schizophrenia and its treatment.'Reading TimeFebruary 2004'Definitely book of the year for insight into schizophrenia'Myschizophrenia.com 'a quirky, idiosyncratic little book that gives a compulsively readable first hand account of the author's slide into psychosis, his treatment, and ongoing recovery.'mentalhelp.net 20 March 2007

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 told in 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)

Author Information

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

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