Henry's Demons - Patrick and Henry Cockburn

Subtitled 'Living with Schizophrenia a Father and Son's story' this is a factual account. Henry  first goes off the rails when he is a first year student at Brighton Art School. He swims in the freezing cold estuary near Brighton while guided by voices and is rescued by fishermen. Seven years of acting irrationally and believing that there is nothing wrong with him follow. During this time his father tries to understand what precisely his son is suffering from and why although he is incarcerated in grim prison-like psychiatric hospitals he is able to repeatedly abscond and he gets away with spitting out his meds undetected. Dad feels that is in Henry's best interests to be shut away somewhere safe and be medicated till his symptoms subside; why does the system often fail Henry so miserably?

No easy answers here. Henry often endangers his life when he escapes. On one occasion he lies down in the snow naked in the countryside and after being rescued by locals who know enough emergency first aid to save his life almost has all his frostbitten toes cut off by the doctors. Father and son strenously protest this option and after a few weeks of extreme pain his feet incur no permanent damage. The father who has had first-hand experience of suffering the misery of polio when a child realises that he knows nothing of psychiatric medicine. He learns the hard way that it can be an inexact science.

Henry sometimes asks him 'Dad, am I a failure?' In an attempt to salvage something from the wreckage Patrick urges him to write his story. Henry is good at this and his shorter memories alternate with his father's account. A little of Henrys' art is shown in the book and that's good too. By the end he's  slowly getting better and not relapsing, there's a little light at the end.