Sharing an honest story about suffering and hope that causes psychosis, that is the mission that Roelof and Deborah Ham want to contribute to. Deborah is sensitive to psychosis and had a psychosis for the first time eleven years ago. Roelof is Deborah’s husband and wrote the book about their experiences The monster of psychosis. In Bij Jorieke they are a guest together for a conversation about what psychosis is and isn’t, how Deborah has now learned to deal with it and what taboos there are on psychoses.
Everyone has an image of psychosis and perhaps often an image that is not entirely correct. “A psychosis is a distortion of reality,” explains Debora. “That can be in seeing, smelling, feeling or hearing, but thinking is also disturbed. That’s what we call delusions. That is so strong that at first you cannot recognize that you are getting sick. You yourself are convinced that something is real. ‘What I come up with now is so brilliant, this is being revealed to me!’ When I first slipped into a psychosis in 2011, I continued to function for a while. It started in the month of May. I taught a class, did a master’s degree, did voluntary work. Everything ran. Afterwards it started with a mysterious experience in church, that when singing a song I had a very special feeling, different from before. But I didn’t recognize it right away. I functioned until October of that year, while I slipped into that psychosis.”
Sensitive to psychoses
The first time Deborah had a psychosis it lasted 9 months. In total she has now had 11 episodes of psychosis. “It’s so intense. You are in the bubble of madness 24 hours a day. You slide slowly. That fall the falling leaves were magical. I can not explain. So beautiful!” In retrospect, that was a delusion. Only when the diagnosis came did the psychosis blossom, Deborah describes. “I had been on my toes six months before, trying to keep everything under control. The bloom is the phase where you are at the mercy of the madness in your head. Then there is no limit. There are no frames.” A fierce period follows, in which the family tries to survive. “The diagnosis is hard and raw. This is so often in the news in a way that doesn’t do justice to what psychosis susceptibility is. It doesn’t always have to be scary, scarier scarier. I’m sitting here with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. But I am not a completely disturbed person, while that is the image that sometimes prevails.”
In the broadcast of Bij Jorieke, Deborah tells more about her psychoses and how she and her family deal with it. Her husband Roelof processed their experiences in a book: The monster of psychosis‘. Order this book at Kameel.nl and support the work of Groot Nieuws Radio.
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