Behind the News: Patrick Guerin, who lives with schizophrenia

Patrick Guerin says that yesterday's World Mental Health day reminds him that our mental health can be fragile.

“In my own experience, I have particularly bad days and reasonably good days. Things rarely get better than that. On a good day I have reason to smile and better eye contact. On a bad day I won’t go out and will go hungry and sleep,” he says.

Guerin, who has been attending the Basin Club, a support group for people with mental ill health in north Dublin, for the past three years, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in childhood.

“I had a few different problems as a child, and I moved back and forth quite a bit between the UK and Ireland, attending schools in both places. Then I studied 10 honours subjects for my Leaving Certificate, which meant I spent a lot of time on my own, which was isolating.”

Guerin has worked as a teacher of English and life skills at training centres for people with physical and mental disabilities, but he isn’t working at the moment.

“I have mood swings quite a bit when the schizophrenia really kicks in. I am not depressed all the time, but I [sometimes] feel a type of numbness, a great apathy and a lack of interest in achieving. My co-ordination isn’t always the best, and small things can be difficult.”

Guerin says that putting a structure on his time helps. “Being able to come to the Basin most days helps. I take part in groups for health management, creative writing, and reading, and I help facilitate some of the groups. We have a social outing on Fridays.

“On days that I’m not feeling up to things, this is a relaxed place to be. There are people who come into the Basin on a Monday saying that no one spoke to them all weekend.

“Because I live on my own, a lot of things go unnoticed. I am at my worst in the evenings, and often I don’t sleep well. I [can] have a great feeling of failure and loneliness.”

Guerin says that treatment for schizophrenia has improved since the days of lobotomies but that, even so, “people are more in a pharmaceutical straitjacket nowadays. There should be more talk therapies. The problem with the drugs is that although they help, they make you feel lacklustre, which makes exercise – which is good for you – hard to do.”

His advice to others with schizophrenia is to get help and be sociable. “People should get out and about in their communities and not hide it when they are feeling down. It’s when you become ashamed and don’t speak that you start believing things in your own mind and become more down.

“People think you don’t want to speak to them, and you isolate yourself further, so you can lose the habit of talking to others.”

“When you get like this, you devalue yourself and forget that you have rights and a voice and something to contribute. In its extreme, this is when people take their own lives – which is very sad. And then people say, ‘But they never said anything about feeling bad.’ ”

recover.ie and shineonline.ie offer support for people affected by mental ill health