Mental disorders in Bangladesh are not a subject discussed freely. You can imagine my surprise when I learnt that my very “normal” mother is one who has been suffering from schizophrenia, maybe since her childhood.

I used to be a bit uncomfortable discussing her illness openly, but as I age and bear witness to the increasingly deteriorating state of mental health conditions and the rise of dogmatism surrounding them, I feel sharing my story will give readers a better understanding, so that the next time they observe any “irregularities”, they’ll be inclined to seek out a psychiatrist rather than a Sufi dorbesh.

Symptoms

Growing up, nothing seemed odd, maybe because I had no perspective as to how a mother behaved with her own kid, but all in all, as I look back, there wasn’t anything abnormal in the way my mother behaved.

She was a typical parent, way too concerned with my grades and strictly disciplined. She always played a hands-on role in my life, whether it was taking me to music classes (forcibly) or to art school (this was voluntary, I wanted it).

But the symptoms would show themselves when I observed arguments she would have with my father. They weren’t regular arguments about mundane stuff. Without spilling the beans too much, she would accuse my father of doing things which he clearly did not do.

Maybe it was about leaving a dirty towel lying somewhere or not closing the washroom door on his way out. Things would quickly escalate, and she would start screaming loudly, and yes, like some demons in certain horror movies, her voice would go really deep.

Realisation

It was the fifth grade and a seismic shift happened. My father, ever the smoker, suffered a heart attack. It was traumatising, to say the least. And the most significant shift I observed was that my mother, who was an avid religious woman praying five times a day, suddenly chose to denounce her religion altogether.

She blamed an “evil spirit” for my father’s misfortune, and stated that she would not be leaving the house, as leaving it would mean that her husband would be in danger once again.

At 10 years old, I realised this wasn’t normal. I, by that time, knew nicotine was the culprit, not some evil entity.

Then I became more cognisant of more of the symptoms. She would always talk to herself, murmuring words, sometimes duas, and she would spend hours on end locked in the washroom speaking, singing, and talking to herself.

As the days progressed, the murmurings became louder and louder, to the point that she wouldn’t stop even if I told her to. She would see that I sometimes got uncomfortable, and she would consult me on what to do, but I guess I knew that many times I wasn’t talking to my mother, but someone else entirely.

Coping with this strangeness was not a big issue for me. My father knew my mother had this condition. They both knew each other before their marriage, and knowing what my mother had, my father decided to tie the knot anyway. Therefore, no matter how fazed I had become, my father treated it as nothing new, and sharing his experiences dealing with this sort of abnormality helped me a lot.

Talking to my father, I was able to not be misled. Many religious elements in my distant family tried to “heal” my mother, mainly through sermons and special water laced with the words of the Quran, leading me to believe it wasn’t just a mental condition; rather, it truly was an “evil” spirit. Yes, I thought a jinn had possessed my mother.

However, this dogma could not hold its grip on me for that long. I knew my mother, I knew she was a normal woman, and the same old strict mother. She still cared about my grades, scolded me for doing the wrong things, but as I got older, in the eighth and ninth grades, she eventually stopped caring (or so it seemed).

She would never ask to see my report card, or how my study was going. She didn’t care if I went to the coaching centre, and she became distant. I can’t lie, those moments were hard, but as a not-so-bored young kid, I usually kept myself occupied with football and random roaming around town. It didn’t matter to her if I would return home at 6 pm or 10 pm. She became completely distant, completely occupied in her own head, and completely lost in her own world eventually.

My father was growing increasingly worried. He had his own business to attend to, so he couldn’t maintain a normal 9-to-5 schedule. Some days he would stay home and not go to work just to spend some normal time with my mother. He would talk to her like the “good old days” and cook, clean, and do chores. 

Some days, however, he couldn’t return home before 10 or 11 pm. Those were the days when I would see the more abnormal symptoms.

What is schizophrenia?

Reading the symptoms, you can guess that schizophrenia is a disease that keeps its host occupied inside his or her own head. The common symptoms include hearing voices in your head, with those voices seeming to be realistic and motivating the patient to formulate his or her own reality in terms of how he or she views the world. It can also be triggered through traumatic events or be inherited.

The symptoms vary. For some, the unreal, made-up world consumes everything, while for others like my mother, they delve in and out of this made-up world.

The symptoms, quite honestly, resemble the very dogmatic and religious influence of unholy spirits. Therefore, it is not so surprising that schizophrenic patients are quite commonly diagnosed by idiotic religious clerics as being possessed by spirits.

I, on the other hand, feel my mother has a bit of everything. Maybe spirits, maybe bipolar issues, or maybe just schizophrenia. Who knows? Certainly not even trained doctors.

Back in 2014, when my mother went completely insane, shaved her head, cut herself, and threw away all the saris she had, I got the opportunity to do more research. She was institutionalised for three months, and I had the difficult task of visiting her clinic every single evening but not being able to talk to her.

I did talk to the doctor quite a lot, and as he told me, there is no cure or remedy or treatment pathway for schizophrenic patients. They just have to sleep and forcefully turn their brains off.

Low brain activity will result in lower chances of the brain roaming around. So, my mother was hooked on pills. I do not want to share the names of the drugs, although they are quite common, and it’s quite alarming how easily one can get one’s hands on them.

My research into schizophrenia led me to a TED Talk that did explain a lot. The talk was given by Cecilia McGough, a postdoctoral student who suffers from schizophrenia, and remarkably, she’s quite cognisant of her condition.

She shared how she would see clowns (like the movie IT) while she would study, and the clown would not stop staring at her, sometimes even groping her and scratching her as if it wanted to get to her flesh and bones. She soon would realise the scratch marks were her own doing, and she cut her nails, which eventually made the scratch marks bearable.

She did, however, not stop seeing the clown. It was omnipresent, and as she was giving the TED Talk, she said it was also here.

I found similarities in this description. My mother would say she sees “ferestas” or spirits. They would tell her to do things (forcing me to go to music classes was one of them), and she would follow them.

“What would happen if you disobeyed?” I asked her multiple times throughout the years. She would say that if she did, there would be great harm bestowed upon me and my father.

I always tried to avoid truly asking myself how I felt at those moments. I would much rather look for distractions and would spend most of my time outside the house, sometimes playing with my friends after school, or hanging out in my father’s office, leaving my mentally sick mother alone at home.

As I now understand, this was also a grave mistake. Being alone most of the day meant her “spirits” would lurk around her freely, and she would get paranoid even more.

My father had the excuse of work, but I didn’t. I just stayed away for my own reasons, and for that I do feel guilty today.

Living with schizophrenia

If you came to my house today, or had come to my house 10 years ago, you would not feel that there was, or is, something off with my mother.

Yes, with age, she has more grey hairs now, and decades of sleeping pills have taken a toll on her body.

Her “evil spirit” has a cycle of returning.

And the cycle starts with her being alone for extended periods of time.

At one point, she didn’t leave the house for eight years straight. She didn’t even go to the market to buy clothes. My father would shop for us, even for Eid.

The cycle develops as she keeps speaking to herself more and more, and the cycle eventually concludes when something devastating happens.

The first cycle, to my knowledge, that came to an end was when my maternal grandfather died. She was extremely close to her father, and when he died, no amount of spirits could influence her anymore, as it was evident that following “their” rules did not protect her family.

As time went on, and grief took a back seat, the spirits came again, and the second cycle ended when my father had his first heart attack. She again realised that following “guidance” from the spirit did not protect her husband, so she was back to her usual self for six to seven months straight.

The third cycle started soon after and ended in 2014, when she was at her worst. She had shaved off her head and was manic. We admitted her to a clinic, and she did spend three months without us, the most painful time in my life.

The pills after her release did help a lot, truly. She didn’t have that energy anymore. She had become an old woman at a young age. A mixed feeling of gratitude and despair was felt by me and my father. She wasn’t my vibrant Mamoni anymore, as she spent most of her time sleeping and dozing off.

The fourth cycle started right after my father passed away in 2021. Due to age, her health conditions forced me to consult a plethora of physicians.

One doctor told me to re-evaluate her schizophrenia medication, as prolonged use was not good. I did reduce the dosage, and as I felt she was getting back her step and was a bit more energetic, I cut off the medication completely, hoping that the “spirits” had finally met their match.

But I was deeply wrong. The old symptoms came back quite quickly, and it was me, the target of the “spirits” this time. She would do dangerous things like leaving the gas stove on at high heat, lock herself in the washroom once again for hours on end, and pick a fight with me whenever she could.

Defeated and seeing no way out, I went back.

Firstly, I removed the locks from the bathroom so that she could never lock herself completely. Secondly, I removed the door to her room so that she could no longer separate herself from me. Thirdly, I picked up the pills once more, and now, at the moment of writing, the fourth cycle is at its end stages.

When I decided to write this piece, I thought of including all the research journals available on schizophrenia and mental health and listing out the findings for your awareness. But the truth is, there is no significant improvement in this field when it comes to better understanding it.

Every patient is different, and symptoms vary widely. Some even become actively suicidal, so institutionalisation becomes a necessity, while others like my mother are ordinary patients who go through episodes, and someone looking from the outside won’t even realise it.

Before I end this long piece, I should note that I have left out a lot of dirty laundry from my mother’s childhood and past. She was chastised for her illness. She was taken to local hujurs to get rid of such “evil spirits”. These are all actions which I greatly condemn, and may not forgive my grandparents for doing. I also left out the nature of the relationship between my mother and my maternal grandmother, which was complicated, to say the least.

I have no patience for the dogmatic Sufis who profit off mental health. I am a practising Muslim, and I do believe in the supernatural. But believe me, “jinn ache” is a convenient business slogan still prevalent in every corner of society, and for this I hold the so-called “educated” class responsible, as there is no attempt within this godforsaken country to better categorise mental health patients and ensure proper awareness.

I love and cherish my mother, and I am extremely proud of her. I sometimes willingly embody her “crazy” side, as it is not contaminated by vanity or anything fake.

And I love and remember my father dearly, for it was his guidance which helped me navigate this difficult terrain. He taught me to love my dearest mother like a child, and what a naïve, beautiful young girl she has turned out to be.

“Rabbir hamhuma kama rabbayani sagheera.”

My Allah, have mercy upon my parents just as they brought me up when I was small.