For 20 years, Sara Kenney has kept silent about her two brothers’ psychotic illness. But now she hopes her film, inspired by their story, will help to lift the stigma.
If you saw me walking down the street, you would think I was a typical thirtysomething Londoner. But I have been carrying a secret with me for 20 years. I have been living a double life, witnessing extraordinary things.
For my day job, I work as a TV producer, making documentaries. But behind the scenes in my world, there are aliens, goblins and spies. These creatures have plagued my family for a long time and we have been desperately trying to make them go away.
They invade our lives because of a mental illness called psychosis.
I’m a middle child, with two brothers, and my family encountered our first aliens back in 1995. My parents had to bring my older brother home from university. He was emaciated – he’s 6ft tall but only weighed six stone. He’d been watching famine reports on the TV and voices told him that it wasn’t fair for him to eat. He thought our parents were aliens and was experiencing hallucinations – both visual and auditory. He was having a psychotic episode and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
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