In a mammoth effort to procrastinate revising for my return to study collections, I have decided to spend my afternoon opening up to the world and talk about an aspect of my life that I’ve been hiding for nearly six years now. That fact in itself may come as a shock due to my tendency to talk about everything and anything personal at any given opportunity, but this is something that I’ve always refrained from disclosing. It’s no exaggeration to say that everything ambitious I’ve done in my life has been partially motivated by the need to be seen as capable, sane and undefined by the severity of my illness. To expose it on a public platform feels like a disservice to all of the work I have done to appear ‘normal’. However, there is something undeniably lonely in keeping such a significant part of my life to myself, and I have made a recent albeit slightly dramatic declaration to myself that shame about it will no longer have any hold on me. The more we talk about the experiences that isolate us, the less they continue to do so, and I am on a mission to carry this with grace and with purpose; to educate, to normalise and hopefully to provide some relief to those living with similar experiences.
After years of experiencing the defining symptoms, I have recently been diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder. Schizoaffective disorders are disorders characterised by a combination of mood fluctuations and a degree of disconnect with reality. The latter usually manifests as delusions or hallucinations, and can include symptoms such as memory loss and disorganised speech. I personally have experienced voice hearing and significant memory loss, however my main symptoms are a variety of paranoid delusions that are so bizarre they’d be incredibly funny if they weren’t so scary when experienced. The first time I experienced a delusion, I think I was fifteen or sixteen, with no knowledge of what psychosis was. I came to what felt like the only logical conclusion, that being that I had officially lost my marbles. Of course, this was not the case. I was experiencing a common symptom of a manageable, treatable mental health disorder, but it took years before I reached out for help and learnt this. I was scared that talking about it would bring it on, or that I would be locked up in an 18th century style mental asylum, or even that I just wouldn’t be believed. I was a (mostly) lucid teenager with good grades after all, and I wrongly associated psychosis with it’s most extreme stereotype – a disorder belonging to schizophrenic adults, usually with violent tendencies. (Just as a sidenote, this stereotype is totally inaccurate, and people with schizophrenia are much more likely to harm themselves, or indeed be totally harmless, then harm others.) Anyway, after multiple episodes of psychosis throughout 2024, I was placed under the care of an Early Intervention team, who have improved my quality of life in ways I cannot even begin to explain. When asked about why I suspended from Oxford twice, I usually mumble something brief about my physical health being dodgy. As much as that is true, and as much as it made Oxford difficult, my experience with psychosis has been the defining reason, and being honest about that has brought me a lot of relief.
Something that I have come to realise is that I am straddling two very extreme ways of living. I feel very close to the reality of being a student at a top university who maintains (admittedly with much difficulty) a life of structure and intensity. However, there’s a precarity that comes with this. The other side of this ‘double life’ is being someone receiving heavy-duty treatment with an (incredible) NHS team, where talk of things like inpatient care is prevalent, and where I have been at times considered a vulnerable adult. In the early stages of my recovery, these lives felt mutually exclusive. I felt like I had to give up on my dream of Oxford, or even of university, and that I would be severely ill for the rest of my life. But, like many with psychosis, I have learnt that it is a disorder that I can lead a functional, joyful life with, and Oxford as a reality for me is becoming clearer by the day.
I’d also like to clarify that I don’t say any of this to offset any responsibility for my wellbeing on to anybody that knows me. Through the NHS, I have a brilliant team of women including a psychiatrist, a therapist and a nurse who support me, and I can guarantee that if I am struggling it won’t be something that you will see or have to interact with. On a related note, please do forgive my occasional poor replies 🙂
But all in all, my recovery is going immensely well, and I hope to return to Oxford in January happy and healthy. I am disclosing this part of my life publicly for two reasons. Hopefully to begin to find a community of people with this disorder, especially at Oxford, and to open up the conversation around people with severe mental health disorders in professional fields. Secondly, I write this as a preface to a couple of issues that I’d like to talk about: the impact of a psychosis diagnosis on vulnerability and credibility, and, in more detail, the process of recovery from psychosis.
Psychosis Recovery at Oxford University 