Being Insane

This narrative documents the life of a young man (Samuel Coates) as he is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and admitted involuntarily under the Mental Health Act into a fictitious public hospital in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. While on the mental health unit, the naive young Samuel befriends Theo Walker, a street-savvy young man with a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. Theo takes Samuel under his wing and tries to teach him how to manipulate the system to his advantage. Because of his schizophrenia diagnosis, Samuel often misinterprets the world around him, and he falls under the charismatic charm of Theo and later one of his young female associates, which has dramatic consequences for Samuel. Trying to control these developments are the nurses and doctors on the mental health unit and the real-life dilemmas that mental health professionals have to manage on a daily basis. The narrative is used as a backdrop to raise awareness of the plight of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and the limited resources that contemporary mental health services have to manage them effectively.