Schizophrenia Inside and Out
I occupy a relatively unusual position within conversations about mental health. I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2014, worked as a healthcare assistant and physical interventions (control and restraint) trainer in acute inpatient psychiatry from 2015 to 2017, completed a PhD on thought disorder in schizophrenia between 2017 and 2024, returned to inpatient psychiatry as a patient in 2023, and then returned again as a member of staff in 2025. I have therefore experienced psychiatry from both sides: as a patient, as a frontline clinician, and as a researcher.
Between those periods, I spent years studying patient autonomy, research ethics, clinical language, and the phenomenology of schizophrenia. I write first-person accounts for Schizophrenia Bulletin, appear on The British Journal of Psychiatry podcast, and write books and essays for general audiences. At the centre of all this, though, I am simply a man trying to raise a young daughter, navigate the welfare system, and live with the symptoms and limitations of a chronic, misunderstood condition.
That unusual position means I find it difficult to dismiss any one perspective. When psychiatrists and mental health nurses describe the pressures they work under, I understand because I have worked within those same constraints. When patients describe restraint as retraumatising or inpatient care as infantilising, I understand because I have been restrained, secluded, and spent long periods in restrictive environments myself. When researchers discuss the latest findings, I can follow the evidence and contribute using the language of academic psychiatry.
What these experiences have taught me is that psychiatry advances best when all three perspectives are in conversation. Too often, they are not. Clinicians speak primarily to clinicians. Patient advocates speak within lived experience communities that may have little engagement with contemporary research or the realities of delivering care. Researchers produce valuable work without always appreciating what it feels like to receive — or provide — that care.
For years, I tried to bridge those worlds through academic writing and professional work, with only limited success. Six months ago, I decided to try something different. I started a YouTube channel called Schizophrenia Inside and Out with Dr Oli.
The idea is simple. I combine lived experience with academic research to help clinicians better understand what schizophrenia feels like from the inside, while making psychiatric research more accessible to people living with the condition and their families. For the first six months, almost nobody watched. More recently, however, YouTube has begun recommending the videos more widely, and the audience has started to grow.
In making these video essays, I realised there was a gap. There are many thoughtful lived experience creators, but personal interpretations can sometimes be presented with greater certainty than the evidence supports. Likewise, there are excellent clinical educators whose explanations of symptoms rarely capture what those experiences actually feel like. My aim is not to replace either perspective, but to bring them into conversation.
The project has helped me enormously. It has given me a clearer understanding of my own limitations and the life I am trying to build around them. It has also reduced the isolation that so often accompanies schizophrenia. Many viewers now use the comments section as a place to share experiences that they have struggled to discuss elsewhere. Creating that environment has been intentional; the channel uses strict moderation, keyword filtering, and clear boundaries to prioritise safety and constructive discussion.
The response has been encouraging. Academics have told me they recommend the videos to students. People with lived experience tell me they finally feel understood. Psychiatrists and other clinicians have written to say the videos have helped them think differently about the people they care for.
The work itself is deliberately bounded. I pay close attention to ethical and epistemic limits, carefully distinguishing between my own experience, the published evidence, and the hypotheses or interpretations that emerge from bringing the two together. I am explicit that I cannot provide clinical advice or support. My hope is to create something that sits between clinical education and lived experience advocacy without becoming either.
Ultimately, I hope this growing archive offers people with lived experience, their families, and those who provide care another way of thinking about schizophrenia — one that is less ideological and less adversarial. I do not shy away from criticising aspects of mental health services, but neither do I believe they are fundamentally malicious or uncaring. I try not to encourage delusional beliefs, while recognising that communities built around unusual experiences can provide both comfort and risk. The aim is to take the difficult middle road: to acknowledge that treatments are imperfect but often necessary, that symptoms can be frightening, meaningful, and difficult to interpret, and that care and control can sometimes be hard to distinguish.
Perhaps this is my last attempt to bring those different worlds into conversation. If nothing else, I hope it leaves behind something useful for the people who come after me.
You can explore my video essays here.
