Changes

Patrick also looks at Henry’s schooldays, when he revealed some talent as an artist and was found by his teachers to be friendly and intellectually sharp, but very wayward, disengaged and disorganised. Perhaps more ominously, he had already started smoking cannabis. (Before anyone interjects here, the jury is still out on any possible connection between the two). He also examines his own family history for evidence of any signs of psychosis or mental disorder in his forbears, but finds very little. He wonders whether his absence abroad so much of the time might have been a contributory cause to his elder son’s problems, and takes grave issue with the theory of R.D. Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist who maintained that schizophrenia was often provoked by parental persecution – in other words, the family was generally to blame. He looks at the culture and prevailing attitudes towards mental illness, having been brought up in the days when psychiatric hospitals were known dismissively as ""loony bins"" (yes, I recall that rather tasteless name from my schooldays too), before such issues were properly understood. Above all, he looks at the rationale behind ""''care in the community""'', which to him is a far worse alternative to the mental institutions which preceded it, and is in his view ""''one of the most deceptive and hypocritical phases ever devised by a government""''.

This book is no misery memoir. It is however a very moving account of how a family can be affected by such a terrible burden, and of the potential heartbreak that any visit from the police or call from a hospital can bring, in which one has to fear the worst - that a stranger or a person in authority has discovered the dead body of their son. It ends on a note of hope, finding Henry more combative towards his illness, with his voices and visions still calling to him, but no longer sure of an answer as they were in the old days. He is currently in a step-down or rehabilitation unit in Lewisham, and ""''entering the final strait""''.