Research
First-Person Accounts in Schizophrenia Bulletin
Over several years, I contributed a series of first-person accounts to Schizophrenia Bulletin. These pieces draw on lived experience alongside clinical, linguistic, and research perspectives, with the aim of illuminating aspects of psychosis and recovery that are not always well captured by diagnostic or experimental frameworks alone.
Taken together, the four pieces explore how psychosis is experienced, understood, managed, and contextualised over time—both within an individual life course and within broader clinical and social systems. They are not intended as advocacy for any single treatment approach, but as reflective accounts designed to support careful clinical thinking and dialogue.
Themes across the series
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Heterogeneity of psychotic experience and first-episode risk
A comparison of two psychotic episodes within a single individual, highlighting differences in phenomenology, insight, and risk, and arguing for particular care and containment during first presentations. -
Insight as both a clinical resource and a complication
An exploration of how retained insight can obscure diagnosis and delay treatment, drawing on the experience of a later, less overt episode of psychosis. -
Medication, side effects, and negotiated risk in recovery
A reflection on the decision to discontinue maintenance antipsychotic therapy following significant depression and suicidality, emphasising case-by-case decision-making and the limits of generalisation. -
Language, family communication, and agency (in review)
A discussion of how linguistic environments and interactional patterns may shape vulnerability, recovery, and the experience of agency, without assigning blame to individuals.
Articles (in order of publication)
- Fantasies and Fears: Comparing Psychotic Experiences
- Insight as a Barrier to the Diagnosis and Treatment of Mental Illness
- When Preston Begins to Feel Again: Discontinuation of Maintenance Antipsychotic Therapy
- Language Under Pressure: Communication, Agency, and Recovery in Schizophrenia (in review)
Position within my work
These pieces represent a completed phase of my first-person writing in this format. Subsequent work builds on the questions raised here through third-person analysis, collaborative research, and theoretical development, rather than further individual narrative.
The intention throughout is continuity of inquiry rather than expansion of testimony.