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Whatsapp Jeremy Oxley with brother Peter in rehearsal

Jeremy Oxley fronted cult '80s rock band Sunnyboys until his erratic behaviour led to its demise. After years of living with schizophrenia he met the love of his life, Mary Griffiths, who saved him from a life of destruction. Together, Jeremy and Mary demonstrate the power of love and how one-to-one support can stabilise lives. Lynne Malcolm and Olivia Willis report.

Growing up on the beaches of northern New South Wales, Jeremy Oxley and his brother Pete were talented competitive surfers.

But by their late teens, it was rock ‘n’ roll that took hold, and the boys leapt into the maelstrom that was the inner-Sydney music circuit as members of pop-rock band Sunnyboys.

Their time in the spotlight was cut short, however, when Jeremy was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 22.

I found that I was carrying the weight of the world around on my shoulders ... and after a while it just became a burden, a great big burden.

'I wasn't as happy as I should have been. I just felt a little aggravated most of the time,' says Jeremy.

'I found that I was carrying the weight of the world around on my shoulders ... and after a while it just became a burden, a great big burden.'

Their manager, Michael Chugg, encouraged Jeremy to see a psychologist.

'After I went to the psychologist, he said I should go and see a psychiatrist. And as soon as I went to see a psychiatrist, it was over. They just grabbed me and told me I was schizophrenic and that I was going to be on medication for the rest of my life,' says Jeremy.

The band split up and Jeremy set out on a path of self-destruction.

'There was no turning back once I saw a psychiatrist, I tell you. I was a perfect model of a schizophrenic, really.'

Jeremy spent years in and out of hospital before taking himself off prescription drugs and instead self-medicating with alcohol.

'I thought it was just a load of rubbish. I don’t like psychiatrists anyway and I think they ruin a lot of people’s lives, and I think they categorise people too easily,' says Jeremy.

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Whatsapp The Sunnyboys pictured in the early 1980s: from left, Peter and Jeremy Oxley, Richard Burgman and Bill Bilson

He began hearing voices in 1995 and became a recluse, breaking away from his family, friends and music.

In 2008 everything changed. Two young boys trying to find their mum a boyfriend spotted Jeremy in a Countdown music video.

'They picked Jeremy out of a film clip because he had beautiful eyes, he had a really kind and gentle face. It started off as just something to amuse them, they went and looked him up on the internet,' says Mary Oxley-Griffiths.

Mary, now Jeremy’s wife, had also experienced sadness and misfortune in her life. Her first husband had passed away suddenly from a brain tumour, leaving her to raise their young twins, Lachlan and Kieran, alone.

'After they’d finished, I went to turn the computer off and had a bit of a look at what they were looking at, and there was article after article on Jeremy. The first thing it featured was that he was undoubtedly very talented musically, but the other thing that came up in every article I read was "the S word".'

Mary was shocked at saddened to learn that the Australian music icon she had once admired was privately facing mental illness.

'I thought, "Oh my God, this is the fellow that I idolised." He epitomised the Australian male, the way of life, the surfing and the good times. You know, he was young and good looking and energetic. I thought that reading about how he had succumbed to his illness was just really tragic.'

As a nurse, Mary became fascinated by Jeremy’s story, and was compelled to track him down.

'I came across an article that said there was a support group and he was living in northern New South Wales, which is only about an hour and half away and I thought, "I wonder if there's anything that we could do to help."'

After a few months of exchanging emails, talking to people online and connecting with other members of the support group, Mary was given Jeremy’s address and phone number and encouraged to introduce herself.

'Well, the first meeting, it was very out of character for me to do such a thing. The boys and I decided we would go down and maybe have a couple of days at the beach where he was living,' says Mary.

When they arrived, Jeremy welcomed Mary and her sons into his home with openness and honesty.

'It all started from there, he invited us in, and we just started to talk. And straightaway there was, I suppose, a friendly connection, the boys were really excited and they broke the ice for us,' says Mary.

The more they talked, the more Mary could see that Jeremy was 'very unwell', and doing his best to appear 'normal' in front of the boys.

'I didn’t get the sense that he was dangerous or scary or anything like that, I thought he was more vulnerable than anything,' says Mary.

'I could see the way that he was quite scared to go and do a lot of things, even to go across the road to get some things from the shop, and I thought that was such a shame, such a terrible way to have to live your life.'

From that first encounter, Mary says the pair had a connection that allowed them to talk freely with each other, and as a result their relationship came about 'really naturally'.

'I opened my mind and I thought, well, here’s a women who wants to meet me and she’s got two sons and they need a father figure ... she’s a good girl. I didn’t really analyse it,' says Jeremy.

The two were friends for a long time before becoming romantically involved—after many trips back and forth, Jeremy decided he'd like to come and see where Mary and the boys lived.

'When he came up, he packed everything up in his unit and I was quite surprised. He laid all his things out from his place into my place, like it was going to be home,' says Mary.

'But then I realised he didn’t do things with an agenda, he didn’t assume that this was going to be a forever thing, he just did that because he needed to be comfortable where he was living, in a home environment.'

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Whatsapp Jeremy Oxley playing guitar in a scene from the documentary The Sunnyboy.

As they settled into their new living arrangement, Jeremy and Mary both realised how well they got along.

'He actually really never went home after that first visit.'

According to Jeremy, he thought he would have been 'mad' if he didn’t get together with Mary.

'I thought if anybody can help, she can help me. I mean, schizophrenia is a terrible diagnosis,' he says.

Mary recalls Jeremy being 'quite unwell' in the early stages of their relationship, often self-medicating with bouts of heavy drinking.

'It was a bit of a compromise to start with, but as it went along we developed more rules, and he had to cut down his drinking, which he did,' says Mary.

'At the same time, through the local mental health unit, we started medicating him with some antipsychotic medication. Between cutting down the alcohol and taking up the medication, we saw a huge improvement very dramatically.'

Read more: New clues for schizophrenia causes and cures

In addition to treating his mental health, Mary focused her energy on supporting Jeremy to regain his physical wellbeing, which had slowly deteriorated with his illness.

'He was not in fantastic physical shape, so we really had to start from scratch and get him well all round ... it’s a case of coaching him along with his lifestyle choices,' she says.

For Jeremy, this meant managing his diabetes with specialist appointments, daily blood sugar measurements and regular insulin injections. It also meant a healthier diet.

'There's not really any reason to treat one person without having the whole family in a healthy lifestyle, so that’s just the way we live now. We all take care of each other and make sure that we are all doing the right things and avoiding the things that we shouldn’t be eating or doing,' says Mary.

When it comes to living with schizophrenia and having young children, Mary and Jeremy agree that the boys have handled it very well.

'Jeremy was always really careful to really try and control himself when he was around them, so they never saw any bad behaviour,' says Mary.

'When the boys were around and he had a bit of an episode, they didn’t panic, they just accepted that was what he had to do because of his illness. We never made a big fuss about it.

'So for the boys it wasn’t something that was traumatic for them, it was actually something that they did amazingly well, and they had this fantastic sensitivity towards him.'

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Whatsapp The Sunnyboys, Jeremy (left) and Peter with Richard Burgman on drums playing at A Day On The Green concert in 2012

Today, Jeremy is back playing with Sunnyboys.

'The boys instinctively felt that they were ready to play some rock 'n' roll again, and so they came and knocked on my door,' says Jeremy.

'I felt good. I felt good with my life, I felt good with Mary, and I felt good reuniting with Peter.'

According to Mary, Jeremy has a new lease on life.

'He's back playing music, we’ve got a book out, and we've been painting, we’ve been doing all sorts of things, so it’s just been wonderful for our creativity, as well as for our personal lives.'

For Jeremy, Mary 'answered [his] calling'.

'There’s nothing more important in my life than Mary, and we just go about things one step at a time,' he says.

For her part, Mary believes the stigma associated with schizophrenia is 'awful'.

'It does ruin lives, unfortunately, and it makes people feel very isolated in the community. We’ve been doing a lot of work over the past couple of years to try and de-stigmatise mental illness, and we’ve been doing a lot of work with mental health reform.'

Jeremy longer hears voices but says he still battles his personality.

'I think I've annihilated all the symptoms of schizophrenia over the last few years. I went through different paths to come to this point. It’s a culmination of therapies that I’ve chosen.

'I’ve whipped schizophrenia’s arse, so to speak,' says Jeremy.

'We're very, very lucky to have found each other and to have had the opportunity to enrich each other’s lives,' says Mary.

Love, rock 'n' roll, and the 'S' word Listen to All in the Mind to hear the full interview with former Sunnyboy Jeremy Oxley and his partner Mary Griffiths.

An exploration of all things mental, All in the Mind is about the brain and behaviour, and the fascinating connections between them.



