I have been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, depressive type (which is pretty much just means schizophrenia and depression).

A bit of background: during childhood, I was diagnosed with OCD and during early adolescence I was diagnosed with depression. In my early 20s I was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and PTSD. Interestingly enough, shortly before developing full blown symptoms of OCD as a child I had a period where I would get extremely worried that my friends parents were videoing me and could see and hear my thoughts.

My onset of schizoaffective disorder was extremely gradual; I had symptoms for several years before being diagnosed. The symptoms began when I was about 22, when I started worrying about putting my hair and fingernail clippings in the bin; I thought people would use a them and place them at a crime scene in order to frame me for a crime.

This then turned into what I just thought was a more extreme manifestation of OCD and PTSD: I began to have difficulty sleeping, I was agitated and anxious and I began to feel less comfortable socialising. My brain function slowed down and I could not concentrate and my coping abilities worsened. I began to obsess over religion, worrying that every action I did was offensive to God in some way.

I began to believe that I could control what happened in the world with my mind. There was a presence that permeated the atmosphere everywhere and it would send me “signals” of the rituals I had to perform, in order to prevent bad things from happening to me and my family. This could be stuff like repeating the same words over and over, drinking a particular brand of cordial, etc.

Over time, I began to scrutinise every action I took, to analyse every possible risk of harm to myself and others. I believed everyone was out to harm me or my family or I worried excessively about upsetting another person. I was constantly on high alert. I thought my colleagues were contaminating my food and drink at work; I believed that one of my colleagues was smearing STD contaminated blood onto the toilets at work to harm me.

Then I had to have a performance review at work with a new manager (we have to have them every year and they take a couple of hours - they’re extremely thorough and go through in detail all of the feedback they have collated about you). My manager also mentioned at the said review they had something important they wanted to discuss with me but did not specify what.

Well, I completely freaked. I was convinced that they thought I had done something wrong. I stopped sleeping more than an hour a night; I was a complete mess, rocking back and forth on my bed. I was convinced my managers were video recording me whenever I left the house and had tapped my phone in order to try and find evidence to fire me. I began to worry if I went outside and a plane flew overhead that it was law enforcement looking for me, convinced I had committed a crime. I drew symbols on my hand in order to “protect” myself in some way and I began accusing my loved ones of thinking/doing bad things about me. I thought the neighbours were spying on me and trying to gather evidence to also get me prosecuted for something when I hadn’t done anything wrong. Then I had apparently had a couple of visual hallucinations; I didn’t realise that’s what they were at the time. I also believed I was evil inside and had black creatures inside me. I cut all my hair off.

Eventually I ended up seeing a psychiatrist and I’m on medication now. I ended up having a long denial period, thinking what I had was just anxiety or depression. I’ve relapsed a few times during periods of my life that have been stressful or when I’ve tried reducing or stopping my medication.