Altered Perceptions

Book excerpt: Description Altered Perception is an eighteen month daily journey from an acute psychiatric hospital admission prior to my 2009 acute psychiatric admission via HMP Holloway Women's Prison. This diary explores my lesbian sexuality, the parenting role of James, my young biological son in looked after foster care, and my support of a loved one with prostate cancer. In this diary I reveal that for me it is not so much whether mental illness can be cured, but what one does in life in between each acute psychiatric episode. A kind of walking between the raindrops, until you get wet experience. About the Author Yvonne Stewart-Williams[Butler] was born in 1961 and is a black English European lesbian single mother with a history of mental illness. She is employed and has spent a short time in HMP Holloway Women's Prison and several admissions in a locked women only ward, in a psychiatric hospital.