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Henry's Demons

On a cold February day two months after his twentieth birthday, Henry Cockburn waded into the Newhaven estuary outside Brighton, England, and nearly drowned. Voices, he said, had urged him to do it. Halfway around the world in Afghanistan, journalist Patrick Cockburn learned from his wife, Jan, that Henry had suffered a breakdown and been admitted to a hospital. Ten days later, Henry was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Narrated by both Patrick and Henry, this is the haunting, extraordinary story of the eight years following Henry’s descent into schizophrenia—years he spent almost entirely in hospitals—and his family’s steadfast response to a bewildering condition.

A unique dual memoir, Henry’s Demons combines Patrick’s frank reporting of his son’s illness and the difficult task of helping him get well with Henry’s raw, eerily beautiful descriptions of trees and bushes speaking to him, voices compelling him to wander the countryside or live in the streets, the loneliness of life within hospital walls, and finally, his steps towards recovery. Together, Henry’s and Patrick’s stories form one of the most profoundly moving and revealing accounts of mental illness ever written.