Despite suffering from schizophrenia and being hospitalised at university, Zara successfully fought her demons and completed her studies. Here, she shares her inspirational story of hope.
Having psychosis or schizophrenia when studying is never easy.
Mine started at 6th form college and continued well into my degree. To be distracted in life generally is difficult, but when you’re trying to focus on other things that are important, it can be even worse.
Soon after starting sixth form college, I started to experience a depression. It started after a fairly trivial problem with feelings for someone not being reciprocated. With some influence from a new friend, I began self-harming.
Soon however, after a difficult fall-out with the same friend, my problems came out and I was referred for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy by my GP. This was going well and I began my second year of college. It was soon into the new academic year, a little before my 18th birthday, that things began to take a turn for the worst.
I can’t exactly recall how everything started, but I remember coming home and being upset and angry about my depression and about college, when suddenly I heard my first voice.
“Go upstairs and cut yourself,” it commanded. As I climbed the stairs it commanded further, “Quickly, go and do it now, hurry up”. This would be the start of a huge distraction in my life and my studies. Hence, the psychosis began.
A few months later I was referred to the Early Intervention Team by my child psychologist. At this point I was still in college and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to concentrate as I now had a few voices in my head and believed that I was being spied on by Asian men.
Instead of concentrating on the subjects I was learning, I was formulating and considering new ideas in my head.
These ideas, delusions, were becoming more important than my studies and I would wander around where the voices told me to go during my frees. I started going off alone, wherever the voices instructed me to go. The Early Intervention Team wanted me on anti-psychotics, a drug called olanzapine. Oblivious to what the drug even was, I started popping the pills.
If I thought college was hard then, it became even harder on the olanzapine. Dragging myself up in the morning in a somnolent stupor I would be late for class, walking like a zombie around the campus. I tried very hard to concentrate on my studies, but what with the psychotic symptoms and the olanzapine, it was very difficult.
How I even passed my A Levels, I still do not know. I somehow managed to get into university.
Before I knew it, I was starting university. I was still experiencing psychosis. By this point I was taking a different anti-psychotic called aripiprazole, but was increasingly missing doses due to late night outs with alcohol. I’m sure this didn’t help, but at the time I really didn’t value my medication since I wasn’t entirely sure if I was ill or not.
My voices and ideas were making me increasingly more low.
I also contracted laryngitis and was feeling very under the weather. One thing led to another and I was hospitalised for the first time in a place I didn’t know very well. I eventually dropped out of university, too behind on class after the hospitalisation. I tried going back, but was too distracted.
Soon after this I was hospitalised again but managed to be stabilised on a medication called quetiapine. I decided I would go back to university, but somewhere nearer in case I relapsed.
University started and I was feeling fairly confident after over half a year of wellness. However, the quetiapine made me extremely tired after I had taken in and well into the morning, so I started to miss half days of university after only being able to rise at almost midday. My flatmates started to become suspicious and curious about why I appeared, what they must have thought, lazy. I told them I had a thyroid problem and they believed me.
Around a year after my 2nd hospitalisation, I started to reminisce and become very angry and sad about what happened. I started drinking and my flatmates again became suspicious. I told them everything. It was after this that they started to ignore me.
Due to nights out, I started to neglect taking my medication regularly, again.
As the new year began, a year of wellness, I decided with my psychiatrist that I would attempt to lower my dose. Unfortunately this did not work out. From my university flat I could see a church spire and was drawn towards it. I started to experience my second psychosis and believed I was God’s new messenger. Due to this I started to reduce my medication myself, believing it was blocking me from God.
My head felt like it was all muddled and jumbled, I started to quiver and get hot and cold sweats. I struggled to make a deadline and simply handed in whatever I could. I was soon sectioned and sent to hospital.
Coming back after hospital was extremely difficult. I had missed many projects during the almost 2 months I was off and was now under a lot of pressure. Thanks to my learning mentor, who has been vital to me during university, I got some extensions.
Now stabilised again, I worked very hard and managed to make my deadlines, despite experiencing a mild religious psychosis again and reducing my medication, only resuming it again in order to avoid being sectioned again.
I was hospitalised again during the summer, but returned to my second year stable on a risperidone depot injection. However, I started to experience depression with a diurnal mood variation, and found moving back into the location extremely difficult.
Now, fairly traumatised by hospitals and psychosis, I found myself growing increasingly isolated and troubled by what I had experienced.
Class was alright and I desperately tried to seem normal to everyone else and instead of missing lots of class like the year before, aimed not to miss anymore class. However, a few months in and I was relapsing yet again.
I became distracted in class by what I thought were colourful spirits resting in the heads of everyone I met. I stopped concentrating, instead considering which colours people where and what their spirits were saying. I started to believe I was in a video game, wandering around town on my lunch and breaks looking for ways to boost my energy and various other game-like actions. Soon I started getting paranoid, thinking that aliens were coming to kidnap me.
Going into university soon became not an option.
In fact, leaving someone’s company at all became very difficult for me. I started sleeping on my parents’ floor next to them, convinced I was going to be abducted.
Unfortunately the essay I had started working on was about video games. My parents and professionals became worried that this was deepening my psychosis. It was so difficult to concentrate on the essay when I had all sorts of other things to think about. Work soon became not an option as I was so consumed with delusions, making them more important than university.
I was soon hospitalised again for the 5th time and again started missing vital university work.
I started working on my essay a month or so into being in hospital. At this point I was being weaned onto clozapine and was exhausted all the time. A parent would bring my laptop into the hospital canteen and I began to do as much as I could to keep up with my work.
I was determined not to drop out of university again, so determined that I managed to get a fair bit done.
Again, my mentor was a huge help. After almost 3 months I returned to university, with my tutors recognising that I had a huge uphill struggle. I am still very grateful to have people who are forgiving and understanding of my circumstances.
Since then I have remained well. My third year has been very much stable, although I have had problems with being social and still continue to do so.
Schizophrenia and psychosis made my education very turbulent, but I managed to stay strong and am very pleased that I continued with my studies.
I know it may seem difficult, but if you continue to strive and overcome problems then there is always hope.
Despite the huge challenges she faced, Zara finished university and graduated with a 2:2.
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