“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 ‘schizophrenia’ comes from the Greek words schezein (to split) and phrenos (mind). It is a complex mental health condition that results in psychosis — a set of symptoms that makes a person lose touch with reality.

Schizophrenia can disrupt the way the brain processes information, resulting in hallucinations, delusions, lack of emotions, confusion, trouble with logical thinking, and so on. A combination of factors such as genetics, brain chemistry, stress

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