It contains an easy-to-inject needle with a dose of hormone called epinephrine. You can use it to treat anaphylaxis. There is "too much small print" in life he says plaintively. He's no fool – and suspicious of people with scripted conversations – but, alas, he believes he can talk to his dead brother. Stay hydrated by drinking plenty of fluids. This is especially important when you’re spending time in very hot or humid environments.

Wow, fire that blurb writer! For days you say?! Sheer skill? I suppose with not so much skill a book will only linger for minutes. So yeah, they still crank out this silly OTT hypegloop.) I decided each name on each spine was the person who the book had been written for, rather than who had written it. I decided everyone in the world had a book with their name on, and if I searched hard enough I'd eventually find mine.” Having said that, Filer admitted a responsibility not to propagate myths around schizophrenia, a condition that is still "misunderstood and misrepresented", he said. "If you ask the man in the street you will still get lots of people taking about split personality, which is completely bogus … and violence which of course can be associated with it but more often isn't."Aside from Filer, the 2013 Costa winners were named as Kate Atkinson in the novel section, for Life After Life; Lucy Hughes-Hallett for her biography of the Italian fascist writer Gabriele D'Annunzio; Chris Riddell for his children's book Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse; and Michael Symmons Roberts for his collection of poetry Drysalter. I have an illness, a disease with the shape and sound of a snake. Whenever I learn something new it learns it too.......................My illness knows everything I know.

I am so fascinated by books that depict mental illnesses. Books such as The Bell Jar, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Countless just to name a few, have really touched me. The focus on the frailty of the human mind is something that resonates really strongly with me, and telling these stories is vital. Certainly for me, they remind me that none of us are alone in our suffering. Nathan Filer still does the odd Sunday shift as a registered mental health nurse, although they may well become less frequent after his debut novel – originally the subject of an 11-publisher bidding war – was on Monday night named winner of one of the UK's leading book prizes. Maybe it is, maybe it will. But I thought the bleak realism and painful memories of Matt’s story did not then mean it was okay to ladle dollops of sentimental goop into the mix. It’s strange how wildly different reactions to novels can be – look at the love-gush that puthered all over Donna Tartt’s latest whopper, and look at this rather good review here. Matt’s traumatic past is so profound that he begins manifesting “commanding hallucinations” of Simon. When Matt begins summoning Simon’s voice in his head, his father Richard and mother Susan send him to be treated at a mental hospital called Hope Road Day Centre. At the ward, Matt experiences a repetitive routine of treatment that he loathes. He complains about the rigid schedule enforced by Dr. Edward Clement, saying: “it tells me exactly what I have to do with my days, like coming in for therapy groups…what tablets I should take, and the injections, and who is responsible for what.” He continues by grousing: “there is literally nothing to do.” When Matt begins seeing an art therapist named Denise Lovell, he’s asked to perform a genogram. Matt agrees, and slowly begins to remember what happened to Simon by writing about the night he died. Matt’s other creations aren’t produced so easily. It takes him weeks to build an atomic model ant farm in his flat, sketched out for him by Simon ‘moving my hand, scratching my pen across the sketchpads and the bedroom wall. His interstellar dust. His atoms.’ Simon had always wanted an ant farm, but his parents never let him have one. So Matt makes one for him. ‘With the right ingredients, like the right sort of atoms and everything,’ he explains, ‘you can build’ memories, ‘stop them being memories, and make them real again’:Writing about the past is a way of reliving it, a way of seeing it unfold all over again. We place memories on pieces of paper to know they will exist. But this story has never been a keepsake – it’s finding a way to let go.” We are selfish my illness and I. We think only of ourselves. We shape the world around us into messages, into secret whispers spoken only for us. stars. This was upsetting, but very insightful. To describe the descent into schizophrenia in such a vivid and moving way, you must have some experience with this illness in real life. So it made perfect sense when I read that the author has been a registered mental health nurse, working in psychiatric wards, for more than a decade. He also worked as a performance poet contributing regularly to festivals and spoken-word events across the UK, including Glastonbury, Latitude, Shambala, Port Eliot and the Cheltenham Literature Festival. His poetry has been broadcast on television and radio, including BBC Radio 4's Bespoken Word and Wondermentalist Cabaret. [8] In 2005 Filer's comedy short film Oedipus won the BBC Best New Filmmaker Award and numerous international prizes. [9]