Max is a long time volunteer turned employee for mindyourmind as a Youth Outreach Assistant. He enjoys blogging, cats, and the state of Utah. Check him out on Twitter: @maxamilli

Henry Cockburn tried to swim in an estuary in Newhaven in 2002 and almost died; luckily he was rescued by emergency workers and was saved that day. But the real story behind the incident is why he did it, he was urged on by the plan life around him. It was that day that Henry began truly experiencing the symptoms of schizophrenia.

“Within days of Henry entering hospital, doctors diagnosed him as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. With difficulty, he was persuaded to take medication, but he kept secretly spitting it out. My initial hope that he would have only one psychotic breakdown was soon disappointed. He was sectioned in early 2003 and spent most of the following seven years in mental hospitals. He escaped 30 times by his own account and several occasions almost died, once sitting naked under a tree in the snow for two days.”

Henry’s Demons is a biography, but not just any biography…it details the relationship between a father and a son and the troubles that occur when the son is diagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s an absolutely riveting book because it goes back and forth between perspective, where you have the father who is utterly engulfed with worry and fear for his son, while the son writes about how fascinating life is and how his illness is a sort of blessing in disguise.

Often times when we think of mental illness we focus on the person suffering with it, but they are not the only ones who are affected by the illness. Family, friends, co-workers, everyone is affected when someone goes through something like this, and that is what makes this book so great is because it details a relationship, not between the father and son, but between the father and the illness as well. It’s something that everyone, not just people who have experienced someone in their lives with a mental illness, but everyone can relate to this book because it cuts much deeper than that. It’s about the intense love between a father and son and the worry, the fear, the anxiety that comes with it when someone is threatened.

To read an article by Patrick Cockburn – Henry’s father – detailing the book, check out this link here: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/henrys-demons-why-my-sons-story-needed-to-be-told-2205090.html