Maybe I Don't Belong Here Quotes

“I realised that that was the first time I’d sat in a room with other people who had been through a similar experience. Young people, boys and girls, Black and white, all in recovery from a psychotic event. I felt blessed to be amongst them. My own recovery thirty years before had been almost entirely a solo affair, and now I could look around and see the faces of young people who had also lost touch, momentarily, with reality.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“The stigma surrounding psychosis is intense and many are either too embarrassed or ashamed to talk about or admit their experience. This reluctance strikes me as odd, because I’ve always seen my breakdown as a truly remarkable event in my life. It helped unlock my understanding of myself, a process that is ongoing to this day.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“Psychosis is now seen as a biopsychosocial illness, which means it is a condition concerning the interconnection between biology, psychology and socio-environmental factors. We take into account all of these different factors as they each can play a role in the development of the condition.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“too many people are falling victim to stigma when talking about our vulnerabilities could do much to help. Psychosis doesn’t just happen to someone. There is a combination of different factors that can play a role in the onset of the illness. The more stress a person is under, the higher the chances are that someone could be vulnerable to psychosis. People should be made aware of the many contributing factors that could increase their vulnerability.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“According to the latest NHS figures, Black men in the UK aged between thirty-five and forty-nine are four times more likely than white men to be detained under the Mental Health Act and ten times more likely to be under a Community Treatment Order (CTO). The figures for Black women are also disproportionate: roughly six times more than white women.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“In my own records I’m often described as a ‘large Black man’ and it’s also interesting to note the very high doses of drugs I received (Diazepam and haloperidol), both at levels four times the current recommendations. What was the thinking behind these high doses? Were they afraid of me? Was it to control and subdue, as opposed to treat and help? Was it a decision rooted in fear of the ‘large Black man’? It’s no wonder Black people are so reluctant to seek help with their mental health.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“It’s poisonous. Just like Iago pouring pestilence in your ear, it pollutes and ruins your day and it takes a strong mind to defend against it.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“If the white space couldn’t see it, I wouldn’t be it.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“I finally came to terms with a far more hostile environment, one in which I will always be othered, limited by the imagination and presumption of some.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“When I look back and examine what I was saying while experiencing a breakdown, I look for the sense underneath. Just the way we can examine dreams, it’s possible to interpret the things I was saying as coming from somewhere deep within my subconscious. I was expressing issues that needed attention, conflicts that needed to play out.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“It’s important to know that at this point, a few weeks into my stay at Hollymoor Hospital, nobody had actually told me what was wrong with me or what had happened in my breakdown or what the prognosis was. I genuinely had no idea what was going on. Because of all the drugs I’d been given, my brain felt like it had been pulled out through my eyeballs, put in a blender and fed back to me in a smoothie. Prior to my hospitalisation, my thoughts were vivid and strange, and there was a kind of electricity flowing through me that was actually rather exciting. Now there was a dull silence and I could hardly string two words together. It felt like someone had switched off the power. But I was going home, finally, and that was all that mattered.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“Psychosis left me a shell, unable to comprehend the world around me, with no ability to focus or remember anything. Being given no definition or diagnosis of what was happening to me was also extremely confusing. Had I broken a limb or had a leg amputated, I would have been able to see the problem. I’m sure the doctors would have talked to me about the prognosis, but nobody tried to help me understand what was happening. I was struggling to make sense of everything on my own.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“Perhaps because I’m a creative person my psychotic episode was particularly florid and dramatic, but I see the roots of it as being a gradual build-up of stress and questions of identity around my race.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“1957 classic movie 12 Angry Men, directed by Sidney Lumet.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“My father became yet another Black man who had malfunctioned in England, short-circuited, and was in need of repair. It was something that I hadn’t foreseen, but then I guess this kind of trauma never is.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“I’m not at all embarrassed about what happened to me. In truth, before it went horribly wrong there were moments when it felt as though I was going through some kind of shamanic experience with the most extraordinary energy flowing through me. I know in some ways I was lucky to have the experience that I did. Everyone’s psychosis is different and particular to them alone; it can manifest in a multitude of ways.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“Black people suffer poor mental health as a result of the grind of surviving in a space that seems to act against you, undermining you, pushing you aside, sometimes unconsciously, making you feel as if you’re living in a different reality. Rather than listen to what Black people have to say, they are shouted down, their experience is denied, and it becomes too exhausting to address the ignorance. This may be the most ‘open and tolerant’ country, but tolerance isn’t enough when it comes to racism. People need to call it out or at the very least acknowledge its existence or we will be speaking with a completely separate set of facts. Being challenged on the existence of racism is tiresome, psychologically debilitating, and deeply depressing. I’m not surprised that so many of us break down living here in the UK.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“Looking back now, I don’t ever remember talking about it with anyone afterwards. We may have seen the shock and fear in each other’s eyes but there was never any discussion about what we’d experienced. This stunned silence is a feature of the Black experience in the UK, where we seem to have internalised our struggle for so long and our survival strategy is choosing not to speak. Some issues like mental health are often taboo in our community, as if we’ve somehow absorbed the British stiff upper lip culture, a culture of ‘just get on with it’. There’s even widespread denial that these experiences of racism exist. But I’m encouraged by the many older Black people who have approached me after Psychosis and Me aired to tell me: ‘Young man. Just want to say well done. Very important you talk ’bout dem tings deh, bout mental health, very important. Nice, yeah. Well done.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery

“According to the latest government figures, Black people are four times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than white people and are far more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychosis. Out of sixteen specific ethnic groups, Black Caribbean people have the highest rates of detention in psychiatric hospital. Clearly, there is something about living in Britain that is tough for Black people.”
― David Harewood, Maybe I Don't Belong Here: A Memoir of Race, Identity, Breakdown and Recovery