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Imagine that you are living your life and going about your daily tasks as normal. The relationships you have with those around you are pleasant and stable. You are happy.
Suddenly, you realise that those around you - those whom you trust and depend on, those in official positions, those with whom you have to deal in shops and businesses, those you pass the time of day with - are all starting to change. They are starting to talk subversively about you behind your back. They are starting to plot against you. Their acts of apparent service and kindness to you are covertly laced with ulterior motives which you cannot quite discern.
Whereas they once made passive comments or even paid complements, now they insult you and throw offensive retorts. Your whole life and well-being is under threat. All your relationships become steadily more confrontational and aggressive. You become frightened and confused.
You perceive the world's response to your presence as aggressive and threatening. You defend yourself. You meet perceived aggression with real aggression. The world responds to your real aggression with real aggression. And so it escalates in a super-regenerative loop until the white van arrives and you are forcibly constrained and removed to a locked cell in a mental hospital. Drugs are forced into you. You know not why. The world takes on an even more threatening form. You then endure weeks of hell until the drugs have dulled your mind sufficiently to make the rest of the world perceive you as harmless once again.
When you are finally released back into the community, you find it hard to believe that you were ever ill. As you see it, you have been normal all the time. You did not sense the changes in yourself because the part of you that changed was the very means with which you measure change.
In fact, the world did not change at all. Due to a chemical imbalance in your brain caused by a slight malfunction in a simple gland, the 'lens of perception', through which your mind brings your sociological world into focus, had become distorted. So the world as you saw it was not the world as it really was.
But this mental lens of perception is the only conduit through which you can experience reality. Therefore you have no absolute frame of reference against which to compare your view of the world in order to be able to see that it is distorted. To you, what you see is your frame of reference. You have no means of knowing that it is you who are ill.
Although all may now see you as strange, most try to be understanding. Nevertheless, among your friends and your extended family, you discover that you are somehow - by default - regarded as a less significant person. You are not at the forefront any more. You are expected to take much more of a back seat now. Your opinion no longer has quite the same weight.
To control your condition you now require a monthly injection of drugs. These keep you on an even keel, but they also slow you down considerably. You cannot work at anything like the pace you would need to do to hold a job. But you soldier on. You work hard to keep up with your housework, shopping and family washing.
If you lose a leg you lose mobility. Lose a hand and you lose dexterity. But if you lose your mind you lose yourself. You lose who you are and what you are. You lose your identity. You lose your self-respect. You lose the respect of others. You lose benefits of formerly acquired skills. You lose the status of prior academic achievements.
Before her illness, my wife was every bit as dynamic and capable as her youngest sister. In fact, academically she rose to far greater heights. Battling against a recurring mental illness while succeeding at running a home and bringing up children is at least as meritous as holding down a powerful position in business. Rebuilding confidence and repairing relationships after a relapse takes courage second to none. It demands a sustained determination. Of all things it is worthy of the utmost respect.