Rick's illness became a wall between him and the world. He couldn’t understand what other people were saying and had a hard time making sense when he talked. He got a job in a factory where he passed the day convinced he was incapable of doing the work and fighting the side effects of a strong anti-psychotic drug which dulled his mind, made his body stiff and jittery and sometimes caused him to drool.

“I lived at home until I was thirty-four because I really couldn’t live on my own,” Rick says. His parents were supportive, but in the 1970s there were few resources to help a family understand the illness that left their son exhausted, confused and often impossible to talk to.