The heartland: finding and losing schizophrenia
- Submitting institution
-
Bath Spa University
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 3182
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Faber & Faber
- ISBN
- 9780571345953
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- June
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- 4 - Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This book brings together interviews, memoir and an interrogation of psychiatric literature to arrive at a clearer understanding of what we mean – personally, culturally and scientifically – when we talk about ‘mental illness’.
Interviews undertaken over two years with individuals who have experienced living with (or near to) a diagnosis of schizophrenia form around half the content. This is unusual in medical literature, which tends to employ short ‘case-studies’ for illustrative purposes or to flesh out arguments. Collectively, the stories in my book caution against narrow or reductive interpretations, idealism and rhetoric.
I drew upon my skillset as a mental health nurse, with both practical experience and knowledge of medical literature in this field, to support the participants as they shared what were often painful journeys. I then used novelistic techniques (foreshadowing, free indirect discourse, third-person intimate POV and stream-of-consciousness) to evoke the lived experience. My aim was to place the reader into the subjective reality of the sufferer, including psychotic episodes, with a view to enhancing empathy and understanding. Utilising such narrative techniques for this purpose is, to my knowledge, original in works of this kind.
Each story raised complicated questions, which I explored in interviews with over twenty world-leading experts across disciplines including neuroscience, genetics and psychology. This moved me towards a critical biopsychosocial understanding of mental distress, as articulated through a series of essays, forming the remainder of the book. In these, I examine and critique my own practice as a nurse, arriving at uncomfortable truths. By doing so openly, I aim to encourage deeper and more honest conversations about mental healthcare.
With this combination, and by introducing techniques from fiction, The Heartland advances the popular science genre. It has appeared in hardback, paperback, audiobook and national press serialisation, and will be translated and published internationally.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
