“My mother has been my rock throughout. It’s a tough journey, and the space to rediscover and reimagine relationships is critical. We found some common ground and re-established our relationship as a mother and son. This was probably the most significant when I started my journey with Schizophrenia,” says Reijul Sachdev, an author and PhD scholar who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia in 2015.
Though Reijul began noticing symptoms much earlier, it took him a while to articulate them and seek help.
First, there was a gradual aversion to the colour purple, where just the sight of it would cause him intense feelings of paranoia. “Just sitting in a room would make me imagine that people were talking to me. It would be distracting for others. And at times, I would get violent,” he recalls. Eventually, he was diagnosed with a subtype of schizophrenia termed Paranoid Schizophrenia, which is characterised by symptoms like delusions and hallucinations.
The term…