Mental health awareness: My happy ending

Back in 2010 was a stressful time for me, I had just qualified as a computer technician and started working, but due to the combination of anti-depressants and anabolic steroids, I developed schizophrenia, and I had paranoid beliefs that I would be tortured and murdered.

I developed thoughts that the government was controlling my brain, and that I was on the path of fame or infamy. Quite ironically, my deeds of helping individuals with mental health issues have been featured in several newspapers, but I doubt it is the work of the Illuminati, which I believed previously.

When I think about things rationally, there is no scientific evidence that the government or the Illuminati are controlling people and I believe the conspiracies usually stem from delusional beliefs, often induced by substance misuse or biological susceptibility to mental health conditions.

I'm very fortunate to have recovered, I believe the misconception that paranoid schizophrenia are psychopathic serial killers is untrue, often people hear horror stories, but I was only a risk to myself and never a risk to other people. I struggled to function for many years, I have been in rehabilitation for nearly 6 years. I'm about to leave the unit soon and go back to the community.

I have recently commenced an online PhD in health coaching with an American University and I hope to help people with their mental and physical well-being by prescribing regular strength training, encouraging group-based exercise, and helping individuals develop rationality through rational emotive behavioural coaching, which also involves not taking life too seriously and developing self-acceptance by not caring about social comparison, and what other people think.

My future aim is to create mental health football groups and when I have finished my studies, to settle down and have children.