The Snow Globe Journals Reviews
A UNIQUE book written by a Helensburgh author is being hailed by medical
professionals as a “key part of the jigsaw” in treating mental illness.
The Snow Globe Journals, penned by Suzy Johnston Syrett, was published just
six weeks ago but is already considered an important piece of literature in
the mental health field.
It is the follow-up to Suzy’s much-praised first book, The Naked
Birdwatcher, on the same subject but it is a much more hard-hitting piece,
giving a detailed account of the horrors of psychosis never published
before.
Suzy, who has now recovered from her illness but admits she will never be
cured, openly tells of the lowest point in her life and frankly talks about
delusions, self-harm and her treatment in the Christie Ward at Vale of
Leven Hospital.
Dr Raj Persaud, one of Britain’s top consultant psychiatrists, broadcaster,
and author of popular books on psychiatry, said that Suzy’s detailed first
person account could perhaps be the key piece of the jigsaw in trying to
understand a psychotic mind.
He wrote the foreword for The Snow Globe Journals, stating: “Suzy Johnston
has accomplished an audacious and rare undertaking in penning an unusually
frank account of a psychotic breakdown.
“If that was all that she had done the book would still be worth reading –
but something much more important is being undertaken here.
“It’s only when the wider public and policy makers come to understand how
dreadfully difficult managing pyschosis and assisting sufferers is, that
proper resources might at last begin to be diverted to properly treating
this serious and common medical emergency.
“This, and for a whole host of other reasons, is why this book is so very
important.”
The title of the book is borne out of Suzy’s clever expression of how her
mental condition deteriorated.
By comparing her own mind to a snow globe, Suzy explains how her on-track
life could be suddenly shaken up.
She writes: “There are times when my head and thoughts are so clear and
pure that I feel as though some small fragment of God is flowing through my
flawed arteries.
“...Then someone picks me up and shakes me. I am a maelstrom of tiny stars,
lunar fragments and space dust. I lose all perspective.
“...I know where this will end...like everything else...in confusion and
darkness.”
In an interview with the Lennox Herald, last week, Suzy said: “I wanted to
put across what it’s like going through a psychotic experience in its
entirety, with snapshots of what it feels like and what goes through your
mind.
“The book goes through the different stages from the illness to hospital,
recovery, and looks at all aspects of the illness in detail. I used various
methods of language, experimenting with prose and it’s almost poetry at
times. I suppose I was just doing my best to use any means to put across
what it feels like.
“I hope it can be of help to people, be it sufferers, carers, health
professionals, to understand what the illness is and what it’s like to go
through it.
“I wanted to dig a bit deeper and, at the time I wrote it, I had been out
of hospital for eight years and was in a place mentally where I was able to
examine more ruthlessly what it means to go through that sort of thing.
“It’s still all very clear in my mind. If you had been in a car crash the
emotions and memories of what happened won’t leave you.
“This is equally horrific and that enabled me to convey it in the book and
the main thing I want to do is to be able to help others going through
similar things.”
Staff at the Christie Ward nursed Suzy back to health from the brink eight
years ago and she was readmitted last year when health problems meant she
had to stop taking her medication.
She is extremely concerned that health bosses plan on closing the mental
health ward and switch patients to Gartnaval Royal Hospital in Glasgow.
“If it hand’t been for the nurses’ empathy, understanding and kindness I
don’t know how I would have made it through,” said Suzy. “That’s not being
dramatic, it’s the truth.”
"The Christie Ward has helped so many. Losing such a valuable and local facility would be awful."
Suzy’s mother Jean wrote ‘To Walk On Eggshells ‘, another book on mental
illness but from a carer’s perspective. Michel Syrett, whom Suzy recently
married, is also a respected author and expert on the subject.
As The Cairn team they offer training, education and awareness
presentations on all mental health issues, stigma and recovery.
They travel throughout the UK passing on their expertise and recently
presented to fourth year psychology students at the University of Stirling.
To contact them or for more information visit the website:
www.thecairn.com
Marc McLean
Chief Reporter
Lennox Herald
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Firstly the honesty and openness is admirable and it is a very easy and compelling book to read and certainly leaves an impression.
I liked how there was a sense of everything, when you’re ill, being permeated by the issues connected with that, for example when you get flowers in hospital in can’t-cut-yourself-plastic vase. I also found that part quite funny, made me laugh although I’m not too sure everyone would find it funny, but with my own experiences I found it so! I would imagine it is interesting and insightful to those without these experiences to realise that even quite banal things like flowers in a vase have to be thought out carefully.
I love how there are scattered quotes/lyrics throughout, as it works really well
I LOVED how very clearly it is illustrated how any delusions / hallucinations ARE REAL to you. I have a friend who sees a girl, this girl has been with her for life and she can be very nasty and distressing at times. My friend knows she isn’t real, as do we, her friends, but the thing people often don’t get with things like that, and voices etc, is that it IS real to the person perceiving them. Perception is reality and that’s all there is to it. I thought that part was really strong.
The shortness of the chapters I liked as the experience of reading it was quite jumpy and wide-reaching – in a short book you manage to talk about many aspects of your life and of you, whilst retaining some sort of sense of how psychosis can be ‘jumpy’ too if you see what I mean? You’ve covered a lot of ground in a short space.
Last thing which I think is really important in a book like yours is how you managed to portray the isolation of having experienced psychosis and hospitalisation. And the call against stigma was great, especially how you chose the medical profession particularly.
Katherine Taylor
Research Associate
Spectrum Centre for Mental Health Research
Lancaster University
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/shm/spectrum/
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‘The Snow Globe Journals’ ISBN 9780954809225 is available from book shops, internet book sites or from this website. Price £8 (includes packaging and postage)
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