Hey Mokie, I just wanted to say how brave you are to have shared your story in such painful detail. It takes a brave mother to face the fact that they hurt their child. I worry about what my illness may have done to my son. If you're a little kid living with someone who genuinely believes they're being hunted by demons, how do you process that? It's all but impossible... My son sees a school nurse, but that's mainly to do with his asperger's syndrome. But I can't help but worry... he missed so much schooling because I moved about, and he had such a crazy childhood, watching me hunting for listening devices... I wonder what I exposed him too. I do think that our children can suffer a lot. You have done just the right thing by getting your daughter the help she needs, the counselling etc. And she must know that you love her, that in itself is terribly healing.

Regarding whether you can be ill, despite your feeling better now... I think you can. I'm not a doctor, but I think your improvement is down to the treatment you've had. The child abuse you suffered needs to be dealt with as well, I hope you have some kind of therapy for that.

Tsunami Surfer, you write so eloquently about your experiences. Somewhere in the fracture of our perceptions there is a truth... I wish I could get at it. It's interesting how many of us hear music... I wish I could write it down. I know what you mean about the difficulty getting organised. Apparently it's called executive disfunction disorder, and is common amongst people on the schizophrenic spectrum. I hope also that you'll be able to go back to work one day. In the mean time, look after yourself. Improvement can be incremental. With persistence, I'm sure you can get there.