TLDR: Ricky has a mental illness but manages it well. He has a wife and two kids. He’s a thinker who knows a lot about psychology and healthy thinking styles.

Birth & early years

Ricky Nolan Browne was born in 1977, which makes him a Xennial. This is the micro-generation between Gen X and Millennials.

Born in Australia, Ricky has lived most of his life in country NSW. Growing up on farms at Molong near Orange and Geurie near Dubbo gave him a love for the bush and its diverse flora and fauna.

Work & education

Ricky worked in retail, selling paint and hardware, when he left school. Then he moved on to becoming a web designer.

He has four or five cert III and cert IV certificates from TAFE NSW, relating to I.T., website design, and digital arts (including graphic design and video editing). He also has a certificate in Community Services and a combined Marketing/Advertising certificate.

Recovering from poor mental health

Ricky started developing the symptoms of mental illness in 2000 and was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2001. He spent ten or so years mentally unwell. Then, in 2012, Ricky had what was to him, a horrific psychotic episode that caused him to hit rock bottom.

From this event, he experienced PTG or Post-traumatic growth, which saw him get his life together through reading about mental wellness. This was his first major epoch of change.

He has been through five more such epochs since. This has left him quite resilient and stable compared to the first ten years of his mental illness. Although he still has schizophrenia and takes medication for it, he lives a happy life and is very high functioning.

His first child

In 2004, Ricky Browne had a son with his then partner. The relationship would only last a couple of years, mainly due to Ricky’s poor state of mind. Ricky shared custody of his son after that until his son moved to the Central Coast with his mum.

Ricky still saw and continues to see his son on school holidays, and is in regular contact with his boy by phone and text. His son has recently turned eighteen. He does well at school and has managed to hold down different part-time jobs since he was fifteen.

Marrying the love of his life

The 2012 psychotic episode saw Ricky sent to a mental health ward of the Dubbo Base Hospital, where he stayed for a week, and where he was put on a new medication that worked better for his symptoms of paranoia and delusion.

During this tumultuous period, Ricky would meet his future wife. One year later, on July 6th, 2013, they got married in that same hospital where he was treated and where they met.

The reason for these unusual circumstances was that Ricky had a car accident the night before the wedding, where he broke his leg. His son was also in the car and broke his collarbone.

Ricky received a titanium rod in his leg and his wife spent the first four to six months of their marriage caring for Ricky while holding down a job. During this time, Ricky was stuck in bed until his leg fused, which took another operation a few months after the accident due to the bones not being pressed together properly.

Self-published author

Ricky Browne is now forty-five and has written multiple books over the past three years, and is working on more. It took a few epochs of change before Ricky was able to write consistently.

He has written books for himself and his family, and has self-published six others. Four of his self-published books are humour, another is a poetry book, and one on some of the insights he had gleaned from his experiences and reading.

The Agnostic Rationalist

Ricky Browne is an agnostic who takes inspiration from the bible but is in some ways critical of Christianity and the church. Ricky’s wife is a Christian, and he considers that to be one of the reasons she’s such a wonderful individual.

Ricky has incorporated a lot of insights from western and eastern philosophies and has done a fair amount of reading on modern psychology, including positive psychology, which he has incorporated into his mental schema.

His little princess

In 2019, Ricky’s wife brought into the world Ricky’s second child, a girl of whom he adores. She is happy and healthy and full of life. Ricky is very proud of both of his children. His daughter loves to go and visit her grandparents, which they do regularly.

Ricky’s focus

Ricky Browne’s focus is on writing these days, although he takes the end of the year off to do coding projects. Ricky will continue on this path into the future as he finds great enjoyment in it.

Ricky’s Strength

Ricky lives in Dubbo NSW with his wife and daughter, Grace. After almost nine years, Ricky’s marriage is stronger than ever and is, in large part, the reason for his current state of wellness.

13th April, 2022