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The proportion of people with mental health issues who smoke outweighs any sector of the community. CLICK HERE to download this very holistic and helpful e-book from I-Tunes.

'Recovered, Not Cured' was awarded the SANE Book of the Year in 2004 and was Highly Commended in the Human Rights And Equal Opportunity Comission Awards 2003, in the Arts Non-fiction category.

It has been reccommended reading for clinicians and secondary school texts alike.

ACCOLADES & REVIEWS for 'Recovered, Not Cured, a journey through schizophrenia'

‘the best recent book describing the symptoms of schizophrenia…. I recommend it strongly, both for individuals suffering from schizophrenia and for their families.’

E. Fuller Torrey, MD, Author of 'Surviving Schizophrenia'.

‘A brave, adamantly anti-sensational tale.’

Kirkus Reviews

‘In the tradition of Joanne Greenberg’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted.’

Lynne F. Maxwell, Library Journal

Mclean’s ‘raw candor and stirring clarity in both words and images make this a rare nonfiction gem, with a power that grips the reader as if by the lapels.’
Donna Chavez,
Booklist

‘McLean’s personal account of a journey through schizophrenia is vital reading for everyone concerned with the subject… Definitely book of the year for insight into schizophrenia.’

Kieran McNally, www.myschizophrenia.com

‘a courageous, first-person account of schizophrenia.’

Lewis Opler MD, PhD, JAMA(Journal of the American Medical Association)

‘A masterpiece of demystification and a terrifying window on to a hopelessly tangled mind… unflinchingly honest.’
Michael Winkler, the Age

‘A powerful, quirky important book … goes straight to the heart of psychotic illness.’

Anne Deveson

‘A profoundly thought-provoking and very readable book.’

Reading Time

ACCOLADE BY E. FULLER TORREY, author of 'Surviving Schizophrenia':

Recovered, Not Cured is the best recent book describing the symptoms of schizophrenia from the patient's point of view. It is brutally honest and especially good in portraying the author's initial denial of his illness. I recommend it strongly, both for individuals suffering from schizophrenia and for their families.

E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.
Author of 'Surviving schizophrenia'.

Recommended for Clinicians and Secondary school libraries alike.

Purchase it from Amazon.com at the link on the right.

 

Julie McCrossin:

Presenter, ABC National Radio, and host of the 'Life Matters' program.

 

This is a frank and funny guide to recovering from a psychotic illness told with startling frankness. It is a short book that is illustrated with the author's own artwork that mirrors the mental states he is describing.

The combination of personal stories and intriguing pictures offers an unusual opportunity to really get a sense of what it would feel like to believe the radio was talking to you or that the voices in your head are real and their messages must be obeyed.

This is a story of recovery. Richard McLean has learnt to live with his illness and lead a full life and he explains how he does it. The book offers hope to people who have experienced psychosis and to their families and it enables people who want to understand what it is like to feel you're going mad, to really see the world through the author's eyes.

I really think this is a marvellous and rare book.

 

 

Diane Froggatt:

(World Fellowship for schizophrenia and allied disporders.)

 

"Years ago I thought people could read my innermost thoughts. In a weird twist I've bared them all in black and white - a bit like psychosis but this time for real."

Richard McLean's book is well represented by this quote. As he recounts the chronological story of the psychotic events in his life, readers will feel his torment and confusion increase.

As much as any autobiography on this topic that I have read, McLean is able to put the reader in the place of a young man faced with gruelling experiences including voices, hallucinations anddelusions.


Throughout his story McLean never gives up on himself. While believing in the conspiracy that he feels growing around him, many times he challenges his delusions by approaching his friends for a reality check and even confronting those he feels are persecuting him.

I was surprised to read that when he challenges these people he is ridiculed, immediately backs down from his beliefs and often questions their reality.

The book is liberally interspersed by his drawings. A talented artist, McLean is able to help the reader conjure his mental state at the time of their drawing.

Another very powerful addition to the book is the inclusion of emails he has received from other sufferers or their families, some of them very poignant.

Today McLean is well, recovered and continuing to take medication. He was awarded the 2004 Sane Book of the Year award in Australia.

This book would be very helpful to those who have had some psychotic experiences and don't know what to make of them. It would also be helpful to families who find that they are not able to believe what is happening to a loved-one.

 

Anne Deveson:

Author of 'Tell Me I'm Here', (The tragic story of her schizophrenic son), and 'Resilience', (2004).

 

Over the centuries, people afflicted by madness have struggled to write about their experiences. Heartbreaking testimonies are frozen in the records of law courts and asylums, in the annals of psychoanalysis and in writings of every conceivable kind from the works of Sylvia Plath to the poignant cry of the 19th-century poet John Clare, as he languished in Northampton County Asylum:

"I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost."

Experiences of psychotic symptoms often bear a remarkable similarity. Each person's story is unique, but fear has a glittering similarity.

Charles VI of France (known as "the Foolish") believed in the 14th century that he was made of glass, and had iron ribs sewn into his clothing so that he would not break if he fell. The Reverend George Trosse wrote in 1714: "I lay upon my Bed, every Instant expecting to be rack'd or cut in Pieces". In Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl (1951), Marguerite Sechehaye lamented: "In the midst of desolation, in indescribable distress, in absolute solitude, I am terrifyingly alone, no one comes to help me. This was it; this was madness."

It is the treatment that changes - sometimes dramatically - depending on the social, economic and religious views of the day. For example, it was obviously better to be mad in the Middle Ages and under the care of kindly monks than to be burned at the stake as a witch only a short while later. Better perhaps to be roaming the countryside in the years before the industrial revolution, yet maybe safer to be in asylums once the big drift to city life occurred - unless you were unlucky enough to end up in those Victorian asylums where purges, beatings and ice-cold baths were standard fare, supposedly to frighten away sin, not to mention madness.

Each new treatment-phase precipitates its own writings. Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) rebelled against the institutionalised treatment of mental illness. Psychoanalysis gave us books like Marie Cardinal's beautifully written The Words to Say It (1975). Recent screenplays have swung towards heroics - how to have schizophrenia and still be a genius.

Richard McLean's Recovered, Not Cured takes us into yet another vein. McLean belongs to the new look of mental illness: those who have remained in the community and whose attitude towards their illness is far more open and matter-of-fact than previous writers.

This is not to minimise the author's struggles. He became ill about the time he entered university, when he and his friends were "young, naive and invincible". Seven years later, he is crouching in an alley, convinced loudspeakers are projecting secret messages. Video cameras are tracking his every move. Voices are telling him he will die of cancer. He will be tied up and his feet will be soaked in water, and goats will lick them to the bone.

As his psychosis becomes entrenched he becomes increasingly frightened, but through extraordinary tenacity and survival skills he manages to hide the strangeness of his world. He even goes overseas in an attempt to escape his torment. Finally he decides to throw paranoia and caution to the winds by finding a doctor who tells him he has schizophrenia, prescribes medication and sees him regularly.

McLean observes that the great tragedy of psychosis is that, by definition, it precludes awareness that something is going wrong - which means it is vital for others to show insight. He now lives in Melbourne where he works as a graphic artist and illustrator. He is the vocalist and guitarist in a band. He has friends and family, pays his taxes and does the dishes.

He has managed to demystify mental illness, and this (as well as his humour) is the greatest strength of Recovered, Not Cured. His writing is engaging and direct. He has included some quirky digital illustrations from his past, as well as messages from the internet which illustrate the variety of people's experiences.

He has dedicated his book to his family, those who endure the chaos and those for whom the chaos has not yet begun - "may they receive love, empathy and understanding."