Each may I think about schizophrenia by Justin Heazlewood

24 May 2026

World Schizophrenia Awareness Day offers an opportunity to raise awareness, challenge stigma and deepen understanding of a condition that is still too often misunderstood.

Justin Heazlewood has long been an important voice in Satellite’s story, helping shine a light on the experiences of young people growing up alongside family mental health challenges. In this powerful piece, Justin draws on his personal experience growing up caring for his mother, sharing an honest reflection on schizophrenia, stigma, recovery and the compassion people living with schizophrenia deserve.

“Each May I think about schizophrenia. (I’m trying to become an expert on it and I still can’t spell it. Everything about the condition is difficult, down to its name.) This is because May 24 is World Schizophrenia Awareness day. It’s one of the lesser known awareness days, which is fitting, seeing as it must be the least talked about issue in society.

My theory is that schizophrenia still freaks everyone out, and so it is about the one thing society has collectively agreed it’s okay to keep sweeping under the rug. Schizophrenia is the black sheep of the mental ‘wellness’ movement, if you will. In fact, where possible, commentators have taken to not even naming conditions such as bipolar or schizoaffective disorder, they’ll simply say a person is having ‘mental ill-health’ – some kind of polite sounding euphemism that I’m not terribly fond of. If someone has cancer, you don’t say they are experiencing ‘physical health issues.’

Therefore, I have sort of taken it upon myself to use the 13 letter word that would clean up in a game of Scrabble, as often as possible. It’s part of a general life phase in which I have crawled out from under the rug as a carer of a mother with the condition.

Schizophrenia is covered in the media so rarely, I can pretty much remember the last seven times over the past fifteen years:

• Musician and comedian Heidi Everett was on ABC News last year saying there was a nationwide shortage of the antipsychotic medication quetiapine (Seroquel.)
• The terrible events at Bondi shopping centre in 2024 were tied to a person with the condition. (The Project had a representative from SANE with lived experience to offer an alternative perspective.)
• Dylan Frost, the lead singer of Sydney band Sticky Fingers was cancelled from Bluesfest in 2023 for alleged abusive behaviour. He said he has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar.)
• SBS’s The Feed published an online story in 2021. A young woman, Phoebe, said the stigma around schizophrenia was worse than the condition itself.
• SBS’s Insight featured an episode about hearing voices in 2020. 10-25% of people will hear voices at some point in their lives. It’s not always linked to schizophrenia.
• The 2013 documentary The Sunnyboy about Jeremy Oxley, lead singer of iconic 80s band The Sunnyboys was an intimate portrayal of living with the condition and the plight of his partner caring for him.
• Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope produced the documentary Angels & Demons in 2008. They recreated the soundscape of what a person hearing voices might experience. It featured an interview with Heidi Everett who I mentioned earlier!

Oh yeah, and then there was me in 2018. I was promoting my memoir Get Up Mum. I got to talk to David Speers on Sky News at eight in the morning on a Sunday. “We’ve also just got to appreciate that schizophrenia is a splitting of reality where the sufferer actually thinks they’re fine and that the rest of the world’s a bit wack. You’ve got to have some really intelligent, targeted strategies to try and combat that.”

I was due to appear on ABC News 24 but got bumped by a cyclone.

When I gave my recent interview for ABC Conversations, I remembered to make the point about what a beautiful, thoughtful, caring, sweet and kind person my mother is. My role in life is to help humanise the medical condition, which just happens to make people behave strangely, through no fault of their own. According to SANE, symptoms of schizophrenia can include: hallucinations, delusions, unusual or disrupted speech, disorganised behaviour, low energy, low motivation, or lack of emotional expression.

One in 100 people have it, the same ratio as autism. It derives from the Greek word meaning ‘split mind.’ It has nothing to do with multiple personalities. It means that there is a separate reality for the person who is unwell. Diagnosis usually occurs between the ages of 18 and 30 – however, it’s not necessarily a life sentence. People can recover from the illness and its symptoms mellow in older age. Having said that, the life expectancy of someone with schizophrenia is on average, 20 years less than the rest of the population.

It’s abstract, amorphous, and holds a carnival mirror to the soul of a person and those around them. It’s one of the hardest things anyone will ever have to go through. This includes the loved ones caring for them. People with schizophrenia are extremely vulnerable. Statistically they are more likely to be the recipients of violence, not the instigators. One of the biggest dangers they face is loneliness from a loss of friends. I can vouch for this. I watched it happen to Mum.

People with schizophrenia need our patience, understanding and love – however and whenever we can spare and generate it. Knowledge is power. The more we can all educate ourselves, the more powerful we can operate as a human society.”

You can read a longer article that Justin wrote for Schizophrenia Awareness Week 2025 here.

Find Support

• findingnorthnetwork.com.au
• supportgroup.mhfa.org.au/hearing-voices-support-group
• sane.org/information-and-resources/facts-and-guides/schizophrenia
• mifa.saneforums.org
• carergateway.gov.au