Travellers on a dark journey: Caring for a patient with chronic psychiatric illness

He was only 18 years old but over 6 feet tall. Strong, muscular, well built and handsome. He had already played club cricket and had been selected to play for the province. He could bowl fast and move the ball both ways. He certainly had the physique of a fast bowler and the potential to reach the highest echelons of the game. Then he went abroad to study and during the first semester something went amiss. He started getting strange ideas, imagining people were after him and became so scared he would not go out of his room. He dropped out of college, came back home to Karachi and refused to go back. When his father first brought him to see me almost 15 years ago, he did not appear too bad. I felt optimistic that this would be a short-lived illness, brought about by the difficulty in adjusting to the new environment abroad. After all, I had seen many other young people in similar circumstances and the vast majority of them had recovered with some time off, counselling and readjustment. I felt he too would recover completely to resume his life.