Disability Rhetoric | disabling writing, in a good way



Diane ScrofanoMoorpark CollegeSpring, 2014Annotated Bibliography: NonfictionAnxietySmith, Daniel. Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012. Print. The title of this inspirational account comes from a Buddhist term that, as Smith puts it, describes a “consciousness whose constituent parts will not stop bouncing from skull-side to skull-side, which keep flipping and jumping and flinging feces at the walls and swinging from loose neurons like howlers from vines” (27). Combining dry humor, personal experiences, and intellectual history, Daniel Smith gives a vivid account of his own anxiety, how he came to understand it in relation to historical thought on the subject, and how he currently deals with it using cognitive behavioral therapy. As he details his idiosyncratic yet relatable life, Smith goes into how everything—from his Jewish culture to losing his virginity to college life to his job in his early twenties as a fact-checker for Atlantic magazine to his marriage, and more—either affects or was affected by his anxiety. He also details the anxiety in his family, such as his mother’s journey from an anxiety sufferer to a therapist specializing in anxiety who would, at times, in desperation, share her Xanax prescriptions with him. Smith relates philosophers’ struggles with anxiety in the same easy way he describes his own thought processes (what he’s thinking when he gets anxiety) or compares his brother’s coping tactics with his own. Smith addresses not only the mental aspects of anxiety but also the physical symptoms and his practical solutions, outlandish as they may be; for example, he found that maxi-pads make great sweat pads! This very readable blend of the personal and the scholarly will make a great read for anyone suffering an anxiety-related disorder or anyone who knows someone who suffers from such an illness. Stossel, Scott. My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind. New York: Knopf, 2013. Kindle E-Book.Stossel’s book is an incredibly thorough one, in which he describes his own experiences with severe anxiety with very detailed research about the nature of anxiety and the history of anxiety. From the etymology of the word anxiety to how the philosophers and the famous have described and experienced it for centuries, Stossel weaves humor and history together in a unique way. He raises and explores questions about the nature of anxiety and explains, in layman’s terms, the controversies about what causes anxiety and how it should be treated. Are anxiety’s roots biological, philosophical/logical, spiritual, cultural, or some combination? He asks, “Is anxiety an animal instinct…a learned behavior...Or…a uniquely human experience, dependent on consciousness of, among other things, a sense of self and the idea of death?” (Chapter 2). Stossel explains his own psychiatrist’s summary of theories about the nature of anxiety and its treatment: “[they] can be grouped into four basic categories: the psychoanalytic, the behavioral and cognitive-behavioral, the biomedical, and the experiential” (Chapter 2). Overall, Stossel’s writing is clear and compelling, with the right mix of science, history, and the personal. Anecdotes range from childhood stage fright to a gastrointestinal episode that flooded the bathroom at the Kennedys’ while Stossel, a reporter by trade, was on assignment. Stossel uses dark humor and acknowledges that he struggles with imperfect solutions to managing his anxiety. Stossel admits he must use a combination of alcohol and prescription drugs to get through speaking engagements. Despite all he knows and all the treatment he’s been through, he asserts: “Here’s what worked: nothing” (Chapter 1). Bipolar DisorderBehrman, Andy. Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania. New York: Random House, 2002. Print. A very detailed memoir about the hypersexuality (lots of graphic descriptions; suitable only for very mature readers) and thrill-seeking behavior of Behrman, who suffered with bipolar disorder into his thirties before undergoing several electroshock treatments and figuring out, with a helpful psychiatrist, the right cocktail of several medications to manage his treatment-resistant disease. From smooth-talking people into investments into his film career soon after college, Behrman gradually progressed to the PR field and then art forgery which ultimately got him a felony conviction, a work-release prison sentence, and an ankle bracelet. En route to finding adequate treatment, Behrman had frustrating experiences of talk therapy being insufficient, of being prescribed an antidepressant which aggravated his mania, and of having psychotic episodes. Cheney, Terri. The Dark Side of Innocence: Growing Up Bipolar. New York: Atria, 2011. Print.This account of bipolar disorder stands out because Cheney focuses specifically on her childhood and adolescence. While most memoirs of bipolar disorder focus on adolescence and/or adulthood, we see a unique perspective here; the book opens, after all, with a six-year-old contemplating and then attempting suicide. Cheney shines a light on childhood bipolar disorder, which has only recently become an accepted diagnosis in the psychiatric community. She describes in detail the symptoms she experienced at the hands of the Black Beast (her name for the origin of the feelings that came over her during mania and depression) in her elementary, junior high school, and high school years. Cheney, Terri. Manic: A Memoir. New York: Harper Collins, 2008. Print. Cheney’s vivid descriptions of what it feels like, not only mentally, but also physically, to be manic are a compelling part of this fast-paced account. Cheney purposely does not tell her story in chronological order: “I wanted this book to mirror the disease, to give the reader a visceral experience…I rarely remember events in terms of date or sequence…Life for me is not defined by time, but by mood” (1). Nevertheless, the story is not hard to follow. Cheney describes the illness’ impact on all aspects of her life, from her relationships with friends, significant others, and family to her career as a lawyer to her travels. Cheney describes her experiences with difficulty finding the right medication, with multiple suicide attempts, with being the victim of a sexual assault, with electroshock therapy, with hospitalization, and with a brief episode of an eating disorder. Cheney also discusses how, to compensate for her illness and the disorder in her mind, she focused excessively on preserving outward appearances and fastidiously attending to her own appearance as well as her home and office’s appearance. Earley, Pete. Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness. New York: Berkeley, 2006. Print. This book is a great example of a research project born out of real-life needs. Earley wrote it in response to his son falling ill with bipolar disorder. While having an episode, son Mike Earley committed a crime that might have put a felony on his record. This crisis led Pete Earley to investigate the current and historical relationship of mental illness and the criminal justice system. Interspersed between short chapters on Mike’s progress, Pete Earley, a reporter by trade, provides extensive journalistic research into deinstitutionalization and the controversy of forcible medication. He follows the stories of mentally ill individuals as well as those who work with them, such as a prison psychiatrist, a judge who tries to reform the system, and an exceptional halfway house director. He interviews Crisis Intervention Team officers, corrections officers, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) leaders, a social worker, civil rights lawyers, and more. His particular concern is the lack of care for the severely mentally ill who constantly pass through the revolving doors of prisons, halfway houses, and chronic homelessness. He proposes solutions much more humane and sensible than the cruelty of the old state hospital system and the present-day criminalization and neglect.Forney, Ellen. Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me, A Graphic Memoir. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print. This is a very honest, open, and detailed memoir by Ellen Forney, who created the graphic art in Sherman Alexie’s acclaimed Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Using words and black-and-white drawings, Forney captures the intricacies of her thought processes in all their variations. For example, she uses linear panels when describing her conversations with her psychiatrist, but to depict mania, she writes and draws all over the whole page. She details the years-long struggle to find and pay for the right combination of medications, and she takes us through the emotional journey in which she, as an artist seeking treatment, addresses the following questions: would becoming stable make her boring? Must artists be “crazy” to be good? Would medication impair her creativity? These are key questions that most artistic or intellectual people struggle with, and Forney’s conclusions provide hope for sufferers of mental illness, reassuring them that they can get treatment and feel relief without becoming the medicated-into-oblivion zombie stereotype that prevents so many people from seeking mental health care. Greenberg, Michael. Hurry Down Sunshine. New York: Other, 2008. Print. In this account, Greenberg details the onset of his daughter’s psychosis, which he refers to as her “first crack-up” at age fifteen. The descriptions of her manic behaviors are vivid and compelling. The family, knowledgeable about literature and interested in New Age spirituality, wonder if the biological explanation for mental illness is sufficient; her mother wonders whether “What’s happening right now is a necessary phase in Sally’s evolution, her journey toward a higher realm” (49). They struggle with every parent’s question: were they right to “put her away” (48)? But they do ultimately support Sally’s treatment at a hospital. Lack of insurance immediately puts a financial strain on the family. Greenberg details the struggle of watching his lively daughter be sedated by the strong medications she required at the beginning of her treatment. But, over time, and with intensive outpatient treatment, medication with fewer side effects proved helpful. Greenberg discusses a good deal of author James Joyce’s struggles with his own daughter’s mental illness in an era before the biochemical explanations. Greenberg, a lapsed or secular Jew, also relates the views of a family of Hasidic Jews who have a loved one in the hospital at the same time as Sally. The Hasidic family persists in believing that their loved one has achieved a special connection with God, while their rabbi was the one who told them to seek medical help. Finally, Greenberg also describes his long-term care of his mentally ill brother. A popular title, easy to find in libraries, this memoir is a page-turner.Hornbacher, Marya. Madness: A Bipolar Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Print. Yes, this is the same Marya Hornbacher who, about ten years previously, wrote Wasted, the bestseller, the Pulitzer Prize nominee, the go-to memoir of anorexia and bulimia. This time, she retells her story, from childhood to post-Wasted, through the lens of the bipolar diagnosis she finally received in 1997. Hornbacher’s story is another reminder of the importance of dual (or more) diagnoses: to relieve her symptoms, to either (paradoxically) disappear or feel more alive, she engages in drug and alcohol abuse, risky sexual behavior, cutting, anorexia, and bulimia. Hornbacher was also misdiagnosed and prescribed antidepressants that aggravated her mania, an all-too-common occurrence in the psychiatric world. Another critical thing that distinguishes Hornbacher’s experience with bipolar is that even after acceptance, medication, and electroshock therapy, she still has frequent relapses. While most memoirs of mental illness resolve themselves with a sort of happy ending, in which the ill person finds the right diagnosis, the right treatment, and relative stability, this narrative pattern does not match everyone’s experience. Like Pam Spiro Wagner and Scott Stossel who discuss living with mental illness when no medication works adequately, Hornbacher challenges most memoirs’ new narrative that stability will come with the right treatment, certainly an important and hopeful narrative, but one which must be promulgated with caution so that it does not marginalize or dismiss the experiences of those who still cannot achieve stability despite good treatment. Hornbacher eloquently discusses how she lives with the uncertainty of an illness that subjects her to relapses more frequent than most treated mentally ill people experience. Jamison, Kay Redfield. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. New York: Vintage, 1995. Print. This is THE classic memoir of bipolar disorder, the must-read which most other books on bipolar disorder cite. Jamison describes the escalation of her symptoms, her struggles with medication compliance, a suicide attempt, and how she reconciles being both a patient and a practitioner of psychiatry. See her book Touched With Fire (1993) for an extended discussion of the relationship between creativity and mental illness and her book Night Falls Fast (1999) for a study of suicide. Lukas, Christopher. Blue Genes: A Memoir of Loss and Survival. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Print. Lukas has certainly had much experience with the topic. His mother, Elizabeth, suffering from bipolar disorder in an era when it was poorly understood, was hospitalized in the 1930s, underwent years of psychoanalysis, and then killed herself in 1941 at the age of thirty-three. At that time, the family hid the cause of death from Christopher and his brother until Christopher’s father mentioned it, almost casually, to an adolescent Christopher while they waited in a busy train station. Elizabeth’s brother, Ira, a medical doctor, lived long enough to get a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and treat it with lithium, but even he too committed suicide, though it was later in life. The author’s grandmother, Elizabeth and Ira’s mother, dissatisfied with assisted living in old age, overdosed on sleeping pills and died. These events would lead Christopher Lukas to seek self-help books for surviving relatives of those who had died by suicide, and, upon not finding any, due to the social stigma of suicide, to co-author Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide (1987) with a psychologist friend, Henry Seiden. But another huge impetus to eradicate the stigma and help people cope with the aftermath of a loved one’s suicide was yet to come: the suicide of Christopher Lukas’ brother, Tony. Much of Blue Genes detours into the two brothers’ boyhood and adulthood adventures, but these lengthy descriptions go to show the fulfillment that even profoundly unhappy people can experience in relationships. Lukas also establishes how much the mentally ill can contribute to society, as Tony did through his Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism. Lukas concludes the book with reflections on how he himself has determined to break the cycle of self-harm. Lyden, Jacki. Daughter of the Queen of Sheeba: A Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Print. Jacki Lyden, a news correspondent, recalls her childhood spent with her bipolar mother and, for several years, a physically and emotionally abusive stepfather. The stepfather was a doctor who prescribed antipsychotics for his wife, but then, when they divorced, Dolores presumably stopped taking medication and spiraled out of control. Lyden details the frustration she and her sisters and grandmother felt as they tried to deal with Dolores’ overspending and numerous other erratic behaviors. Lyden describes her frustration with a legal system that refuses to commit Dolores to a mental institution until she is practically bankrupt and hits a judge on the head with his own engraved name plate during a session regarding one of the many lawsuits Dolores was involved in. One of Dolores’ longtime delusions was that she was the Queen of Sheeba, and Lyden makes many creative, yet convoluted comparisons between her mother and said queen. Lyden also contemplates at length how her mother’s unpredictability and her stepfather’s abuse led her to seek escape and thrills as an international journalist in the Middle East at the time of the first Gulf War. Moezzi, Melody. Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life. New York: Penguin, 2013. Print. Melody Moezzi, an Iranian-American activist and lawyer, was hospitalized for bipolar disorder in her twenties. She frames her story as demonstrating two kinds of bipolarity: the highs and lows of her mental illness as well as the dual identity of being Persian and American in both the pre- and post-9/11 United States. The word bipolar, or two poles, suggests opposites, but just like Moezzi’s illness, which can have mixed states, so can the immigrant’s biculturalism. For example, ironically, Moezzi is able to write and speak freely about Iran only in the U.S., a country whose historical interference led to the oppressive state of affairs in Iran in the first place. Also, despite the greater acceptance of mental illness in the U.S. as opposed to Iran, Moezzi still experienced misdiagnosis and inhumane treatment at the hands of the U.S. mental health system. Moezzi discusses many pertinent mental health issues, such as stigma, denial, lack of insight (anosognosia), psych ward comradery, the homeless mentally ill (casualties of the U.S.’s policies in recent decades of deinstitutionalization), insurance companies’ practice of more heavily favoring “fifteen-minute ‘med checks’ than…forty-five-minute therapy sessions” (170) which results in hasty care, the cruelty of putting psychotic people in isolation when isolation itself has been proven to induce psychosis, and more. Her story is also one of the dangerous misdiagnosis of a bipolar person as having unipolar depression and being prescribed antidepressants that induce mania and actually exacerbate bipolar disorder. Moezzi details the different stages of her illness, describing her symptoms in great detail, as well as their relation to her study of law, her advocacy and writing work, her practice of Islam, her family relationships, and her marriage. Moezzi’s experiences are varied and colorful; in a state of mania, she planned and conducted Hooping for Peace, a Hula Hooping event designed to support Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, but explains how not all her manic ideas were as constructive. Now stable with the right medications, Moezzi has written an insightful and vibrant memoir. She currently makes a career advocating for mental illness awareness as well as issues facing American Muslims. Raeburn, Paul. Acquainted with the Night: A Parent’s Quest to Understand Depression and Bipolar Disorder in His Children. New York: Broadway, 2004. Print.Raeburn writes an accessible and fast-paced memoir of the onset of his son’s bipolar disorder (sixth grade) and the subsequent years during which his daughter developed severe depression (also right around sixth grade). As the children progress into their teenage years, the memoir discusses the difficulties of dual diagnosis, that is, when mental illness co-occurs with other problems, including drug abuse, rape, and divorce. The parents’ different attitudes about discipline impeded efforts to support the children’s recovery at home. The children’s mother struggled with depression and alcoholism, while Raeburn had anger problems. The perspective of the children’s older brother, not mentally ill, is discussed as well. Both ill children were hospitalized numerous times and made or threatened suicide attempts. Raeburn’s daughter repeatedly had bouts with cutting. Raeburn details the constant stress and burden of constantly fighting with insurance companies and going through multiple mental health practitioners before finding the right ones. A journalist, Raeburn provides a very accessible explanation of the insurance industry’s impact on the mental health care system. He also provides a lot of insight into the crisis our nation faces in its inadequacy to care for mentally ill children. He discusses why childhood mental illness can be even more difficult to diagnose than adult mental illness and why there has been little research in the use of psychotropic medications in children. Borderline Personality DisorderKaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted. New York: Vintage, 1993. Print. Kaysen’s narrative is one of the few readily available accounts of borderline personality disorder available. In a relatively short and sometimes choppily arranged volume that features facsimiles of hospital records from Kaysen’s stay in New York’s famous McLean Hospital in the late 1960s, Kaysen manages to discuss the complexities of this disorder and the doubt by some that this is really a mental illness at all as opposed to adolescent identity confusion or upwardly mobile social pressure or something else. The reader wonders, could it be a combination? In the fascinating chapter, “Mind vs. Brain,” Kaysen looks at the shifts and rifts in the medical profession between the earlier psychoanalytic explanations of mental illness and the latter brain chemistry explanations. If everything in our brains breaks down into chemicals, she wonders, is anything left of “us” or our minds? Kaysen also brings up the question of where borderline personality disorder falls: is it a psychological or chemical problem, or both? Many of these questions come up toward the end of the book, which leaves the rest of the narrative to focus largely, almost salaciously so, on the realities of life in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s. Perhaps this accounts in part for the book’s bestseller status. The sensationalization of what went on in such facilities is also the predominating impression the viewer is left with after watching the film adaptation (1999) of this book as well. Some notable parts of the book, however, include a thorough examination of the patients’ relationships with the different employees of the institution as well as the stigma that Kaysen faced as she transitioned into the world outside the hospital. Kaysen also does a thorough job of describing symptoms of mental illness, such as the difference between depression and mania in the chapter “Velocity vs. Viscosity.” She begins, “Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast” (75) and then proceeds to take us through a train of thought in each mode. Reiland, Rachel. Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder. Center City: Hazelden, 2004. Print.This memoir follows the course of years-long psychoanalysis that helped Rachel Reiland (not her real name) recover from Borderline Personality Disorder symptoms that were exacerbated after the birth of her second child. The cause of the disorder is depicted as the abuse she suffered at the hands of aloof parents who often shamed her. She experienced some physical abuse and there is a question as to whether she may have been thrown against a wall as an infant or toddler. Reiland’s therapist’s theory was that the suffering during her childhood caused her to remain in a perpetual state of id (of Freud’s id, ego, and superego), which explains her difficulties controlling her emotions and feeling security. It is as if she were an adult experiencing a toddler’s sense of hysteria during a tantrum. Her symptoms are described in depth and correlated with the diagnostic terms used to describe BPD in the DSM. Both medication and therapy are used to manage the disorder, though by the time therapy is completed, Reiland is able to function well without medication. A supportive husband and a new understanding of the Catholicism she was raised with helped Reiland to recover. Troubling is the quote on the back of the edition of the book that I read, in which Jerold Kreisman, author of the well-known BPD survival guide, I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me, exclaims that Reiland’s memoir proves “that raging mental illness can be cured.” The use of the term “cured” is troubling, as many in the psychiatric community view mental illness as chronic and incurable and therefore prefer the term “recovery” for the achievement of long-term stability. VanGelder, Kiera. The Buddha and the Boderline: A Memoir. Oakland: New Harbinger, 2010. Print. VanGelder here provides an exceptionally thorough account of her symptoms as well as how she researched and used Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Integrated Family Systems (IFS) Therapy to stabilize her personal and professional life. Relieved to finally know her diagnosis, adult VanGelder, who has been suffering long before the opening chapter which shows her writing a letter to a lost love in blood during a teen summer program, aggressively researches her condition and commits herself to recovery. The book features quotations from Dr. Marsha Linehan and other renowned BPD scholars, and VanGelder thoughtfully shows the application of these principles to the treatment of her disorder. She uses brutal honesty in describing her many setbacks and challenges. The mental health care system and her insurance also provide challenges. VanGelder also describes how her Buddhist lifestyle informs her recovery. VanGelder describes the extra difficulties and stigmas faced by people with BPD as opposed to other mental illnesses. Even among mental health care professionals, patients with BPD are often seen as beyond help. In other cases, professionals are not well informed about the disorder or hesitate to use the diagnosis because of its still controversial and uncertain status within the medical community. VanGelder explains how anxiety, depression, and mood-stabilizing medication have helped and hurt her and mentions that recent research suggests biological origins for BPD, although VanGelder was a victim of sexual abuse.DepressionBrosch, Allie. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013. Print.Created from both new material and selections from her award-winning blog, this graphic memoir combines childhood memories, dog training anecdotes, and descriptions of what severe depression feels like. There are no transitions between the stories, which are divided by chapter titles and usually feature different colors in the background of the pages, but somehow, they work together and don’t feel disjointed. They’re all unified by the quirky character and voice that Brosch creates as well as the style of her drawing. There is humor throughout, particularly as Brosch describes her friends’ misguided efforts to help her with her depression, or as she describes how it feels as the medication begins to work and her feelings begin to come back. In Allie Brosch’s work, there is nothing too insignificant or quirky; in a particularly funny passage, a kernel of corn precipitates an epiphany.Casey, Nell, ed. Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Print.What is perhaps most helpful about this anthology of essays is that it provides a variety of points of view; some of the essays are written by depression sufferers themselves, including those who have bipolar, not just unipolar, depression, while other essays are by spouses of sufferers. For example, accompanying an excerpt from William Styron’s well-known piece on depression is an essay by his wife. One essay is written by the sibling of a sufferer. The editor of the collection, Nell Casey, writes an account of her sister Maud’s depression, while Maud’s personal account is also included. Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, who immigrated in childhood to the U.S. from Ghana, writes about the stereotypical remarks she often encountered when she told people, black and white, that she was writing a book about black women and depression. Jane Kenyon’s poem, “Having It Out with Melancholy” (1993), is also excerpted in the epigraph and introduction of the book. Selections include essays by high-profile writers, such as Kay Redfield Jamison, Russell Banks, Susanna Kaysen, Larry McMurtry, Nancy Mairs, and more.Danquah, Meri Nana-Ama. Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey Through Depression, A Memoir. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. Print. This memoir provides an underrepresented perspective, that of an immigrant and person of color who suffers from depression. In some ways, it is the perspective of someone of low socioeconomic status (Danquah describes the difficulty of paying for therapy and prescriptions), but her financial difficulties are more along the lines of those of the struggling writer rather than the urban underclass; Danquah was born to a college-educated mother and spent her first two years of high school in boarding school. Danquah, a creative writer by profession, weaves poetry and song lyrics (the title of the book is from Billie Holiday) into her memoir. Danquah explores the stereotypes that people have about depression, particularly as it relates to African-Americans. For instance, she found both blacks and whites expected black women to be stronger than other women. Questions Danquah addressed included the following: Is depression a disease that rich, white people with leisure time simply made up? Is depression a consequence of the historical experiences of discrimination that blacks have experienced in America, or is it a biochemical problem? Was Danquah simply “melodramatic, thin-skinned, and whiny, just like [her Ghanian parents’] image of the average American” (34)? Danquah, who suffered greatly following her parents’ divorce, sexual abuse by an acquaintance and then by her mother’s boyfriend, promiscuity, and then a marriage to an abusive husband wrestles with the question as to whether depression is induced by situations or by brain chemistry or by an interaction of both. She eventually concludes that it is both, and stresses the importance of therapy to deal with situations and medication to deal with brain chemistry. However, she doesn’t oversimplify; she discusses her long resistance to medication use, how the first medication prescribed to her (Zoloft) led her to alcoholism, and finally her ultimate reliance on a low dose of a different medication (Paxil). At the same time, her sister has rejected medication entirely. Danquah also explores the experiences of a black friend the same age who suffers from depression as well as the depression of a friend’s mother, Patricia Bledsoe, a successful African-American professional whose illness began in the 1960s.Slater, Lauren. Prozac Diary. New York: Random House, 1998. Print. Slater, who has struggled with anorexia, cutting, OCD, depression, and borderline personality disorder, eventually becomes a member of the first masses to be prescribed Prozac in the 1980s. In eloquent, elegant prose, and at times featuring powerful metaphors, Slater addresses the many concerns that people may have about starting a drug regimen to treat mental illness. She is suspicious of using chemicals; does this make her an addict, or does it make her a dependent, which is different? She is suspicious of the large corporation that makes the drug. Does the biological explanation of mental illness take away the need for medical professionals to consider the lived experience and personal history of the patient? Does mental illness have nothing to do with your life but only with the chemicals in your brain? Are we, as people, anything more than chemicals, then? Is there a mind, a self, a personality, or choices? Slater wonders if the drug makes her like other people or if it confers upon her an unfair advantage over others. Slater feels that while on medication she’s able to do more mundane tasks, but she writes less. On Prozac, is her creativity different or diminished? The beauty and thoughtfulness of the book seem to undercut the idea that Prozac may have dulled Slater or stultified her creativity. She feels so good and wants to try so many things that she wonders if Prozac makes her reckless. She considers Arthur Kleinman’s work on illness narratives and wishes for “a supportive transition, moving the patient incrementally from an illness-based identity to a health-based identity” (37). She considers suffering and the relief from it in a religious context, as well. Slater also discusses the sexual side effects of psychotropic medication at more length than other memoirs I read in the course of this study. Solomon, Andrew. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. New York: Scribner, 2001. Print. This thorough and definitive work on depression is over 440 pages, not including notes and bibliography. It is helpfully broken up into chapters which may be read in isolation if the reader does not have the time or inclination to read the entire book. Solomon focuses one of the chapters on his and others’ personal experiences with depression. Other chapters include treatments for depression, the relationship between suicide and depression, the history of depression, and more. Perhaps most helpful is that Solomon looks at depression in different countries, cultures, and socioeconomic groups, while most memoirs of mental illness focus on middle-class whites in the U.S. Styron, William. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. New York: Random House, 1990. Print. Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such classics as The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice, this compact volume details Styron’s bout with acute depression. Styron describes not being diagnosed or suffering acutely until his sixties, rather than in his teen years or early adulthood, as one might expect. But, he explains, he had abused alcohol for forty years prior. This might raise a helpful discussion about that chicken-or-egg question: was the depression already there but soothed by the substance abuse or was the acute depression precipitated by substance abuse? Or a combination of both? This book could be the catalyst for a discussion of dual diagnosis (mental illness and substance abuse). Also, Styron’s case was further complicated by the high dose of sleeping pills he was prescribed upon the onset of his depression after he stopped drinking alcohol. Styron excels at describing the feelings and symptoms of his major depressive episodes. By engaging in what he admits is an impossible task (describing the indescribable), hopes to build sympathy in those who have never experienced depression and thereby lessen the stigma associated with suicide, an all-too-common result of major depression. Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America. New York: Riverhead, 1995. Print. This is a very and relatable account of depression, told in first person by the author, who began suffering symptoms at age 11 in the late 1970s. At some points, including at the time of the book’s publication, Wurtzel’s depression has been regarded and treated as bipolar (including both mania and depression), with lithium, but for most of her adolescence and twenties, covered in the book, the most distressing symptoms and the ones she describes in most depth are the depressive ones. Wurtzel’s memoir, over 350 pages, describes, in sometimes excruciating detail, her feelings of depression and how she could not escape them. She recognizes that lots of other kids have gone through the tumult of the countercultural revolution and divorce culture that began in the era of her childhood but that others don’t seem to have the same troubles coping as she did, and therefore she comes to the belief that something is chemically wrong with her. Therapist after therapist futilely tries to help her with psychotherapy; one, during college, even cruelly accuses her of wanting “happy pills” (148) for a quick fix to her problems, after Wurtzel has been suffering for years. Wurtzel also discusses how it’s very hard to get intensive psychological or psychiatric care and to pay for it unless you are acutely suicidal, so she spent many years in a hellish limbo of symptoms that led to destructive behaviors, often just short of suicide. Wurtzel wishes her problem had a culturally recognizable label, like the drug abuse running rampant in the country in the 1980s, or an obvious solution. Wurtzel acknowledges how her depression and the self-centered behavior that resulted from it damaged her friendships, relationships, and, worst of all, her relationship with her hardworking single mother. She realizes that, by all comparisons, her life isn’t so horrible and she feels guilty about her depression but powerless to stop it. Wurtzel describes the frustration of depression because the pain feels meaningless; she feels mostly apathetic and that there is no “redeeming value” (251) for her suffering. Wurtzel distinguishes between the emptiness of depression and the romanticized manic “madness” (294) that people talk about when referencing cultural icons from Zelda Fitzgerald to Jim Morrison. Wurtzel has a painfully straightforward take on our tendency to say that mental illness is worth it because of the creativity generated. In fact, Wurtzel provides the most scathing critique of this viewpoint that I have encountered in all my reading. Regarding Sylvia Plath, Wurtzel has this to say:Forget about the scant hours in her brief life when [she] was able to produce the works in Ariel…just remember the days that spanned into years when she could not move, couldn’t think straight, could only lie in wait in a hospital bed…Think, instead, of the girl herself, of the way she must have felt…the way no amount of great poetry and fascination and fame could make the pain she felt at that moment worth suffering. Remember that when you’re at the point at which you’re doing something as desperate and violent as sticking your head in an oven, it is only because the life that preceded this act felt even worse. Think about living in depression from moment to moment, and know it is not worth any of the great art that comes as its by-product.” (295-6) Despite warning against the glamorization of madness, Wurtzel explains how she nevertheless fell prey to this thinking sometimes in her own life. Wurtzel explains how, after an effective doctor puts her on Prozac, which would eventually help her a great deal, she experiences the rather common fear that by losing her depression she will lose her personality. She clarifies, though, that this was not the case: “I had developed a persona that could be extremely melodramatic and entertaining…I thought this ability…was what my friends liked about me…[but] over time, in the years of my recovery…most of them let me know, one by one, that while they didn’t mind…, they excused this behavior as a sad flaw. It wasn’t what they liked about me at all. It was what they put up with, because when I wasn’t busy flying around the room and ranting…, I was actually…a good friend” (326-7). In the Epilogue, Wurtzel gives historical background of the popularity and controversy of Prozac. She acknowledges her continued struggle with mental illness and medication adjustment, saying “Mental health is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent…after a while, a strong, hardy, deep-seated depression will outsmart any chemical” (344).HoardingMiller, Kimberly Rae. Coming Clean: A Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2013. Print.The only hoarding memoir I’ve come across so far, this recent book is poignant and highly readable. Miller details her family situation spinning out of control as a result of her father’s hoarding of documents and electronics, and then, years later, following a health problem, her mother’s online shopping-based hoarding. A chilling anecdote early in the book describes the family’s being visited by Child Protective Services and Miller’s mother suggesting that unless she wanted to be taken from her parents, Kimberly must not give people an opportunity to see their home, which ultimately burned down while Miller and her mother (who made just this one attempt to leave her husband) were staying with the maternal grandmother who would soon kick them out. Thus begins a lifetime of hiding and overcompensating by overachieving in school and extracurricular activities on Miller’s part. She escapes to a prestigious college as soon as she finishes high school, but when her financial aid doesn’t come through for her sophomore year, she attempts suicide, thinking she will be consigned to live in the disgusting family home forever. Later, back at college, afraid of being “outed” as someone who grew up dirty, Miller “studied the labels on cleaning bottles, made notes on how to use them, and did Internet searches on the regularity with which each chore should be performed. [She] cleaned in private…afraid [she] would be accused of doing it wrong” (195). Once college and career get back on track, Miller lives her adulthood in limbo, both distancing herself from her parents and also making periodic visits to clean out their apartment and give these people she loves some semblance of a normal life. Miller’s father lets her clean the apartment, unlike some hoarders, who are vehemently resistant; he views it as a sort of punishment he deserves, although he hasn’t done much to get better. He was once briefly hospitalized but never took the recommended medication. Miller experiences both protective feelings toward her parents as well as frustration and anger. Indeed, in the first passage of the memoir, Miller assures the readers and her parents that she does not hate them: “Sure, I remember the dirt and the rats and the squalor, but I also remember parents who loved me. Doting, fallible people who gave me everything they had” (4). When Miller first saw hoarding depicted on the TV news, she was excited to know that “There was now a word for my father, and having a word meant that we weren’t alone in this,” but her mother is not so easily convinced: “Your father doesn’t have anything other than a severe case of not caring about anyone but himself and his papers” (101). Miller doesn’t like the idea of the A&E show, Hoarders, exploiting people like her parents for entertainment value, but without the public awareness of the problem that the show brought, I’m not sure Miller’s book would have been published. While mostly a personal story, Miller does bring up a few interesting facts about the psychology of hoarding: that “hoarders tend to be perfectionists” (90), that new research suggests that “hoarding is not really an OCD but its own compulsive behavioral disorder” (226), and that “children of alcoholics [which her dad was] are four times more likely than the general population to become hoarders” (211). Obsessive-Compulsive DisorderAdam, David. The Man Who Couldn’t Stop. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Kindle E-Book. This book is the most thorough I’ve read to date on OCD. From etymology to Ethiopia, Adam covers it all. Adam includes his personal story as well as the latest medical information about OCD and treatment. The history of people’s conception of the disease is related in layperson’s terms, as are brain terms pertaining to OCD. Adam examines theories on the origins of OCD in children and adults, as well as its relationship to other mental illnesses and its new status in the DSM-5 as a spectrum unto itself, as opposed to its previously being subsumed under “anxiety disorders.” Bell, Jeff. Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Center City: Hazelden, 2007. Kindle E-Book. Written by a radio journalist, the metaphor of “rewind, replay, repeat” is used throughout the book, with sections indicated with pause symbols, play symbols, and fast forward symbols, as one would see on a tape recorder. The metaphor is very apt for what goes on in OCD. The author also literally rewinds, replays, and repeats tapes of himself doing broadcasts to make sure he did them correctly. The book very thoroughly describes Bell’s obsessive fears of hurting others, particularly while driving. The focus is on his use of cognitive behavior therapy, particularly exposure and response prevention (ERP) under the guidance of psychologist Jacqueline B. Persons and psychiatrist Jeffrey M. Schwarz, experts in that field. Unlike many other contemporary memoirs of mental illness, Bell extensively discusses the role of spirituality in his recovery from OCD. Bell also briefly discusses his use of medication at certain points in his treatment. Foust, Traci. Nowhere Near Normal: A Memoir of OCD. New York: Gallery, 2011. Print.Foust’s memoir is devastating in many ways. Her OCD struck very young, at just age seven. As a child, she washed her hands and brushed her teeth with Ajax. In addition to contamination fears, she also had numbers issues, from counting to being alarmed by the way certain numbers looked next to one another: “numbers could sort of come to life and ask to specifically not stand next to another number, like when nine didn’t want to touch the poky parts of four because sometimes nine looked like a pregnant woman and if four hurt the baby then someone who was really pregnant…would lose her baby” (156). She constantly unplugged appliances for fear that her house would go on fire, and she worried that she would set people on fire with her mind, like she saw in the movies. Foust looked for explanations for her difference: was she possessed? Mentally retarded? She writes of the anguish of knowing she wasn’t “normal,” but not being able to stop because the compulsions were supposed to save lives. As a pre-teen, she felt she had to sing “We Are the World” (it was the 1980s) a certain number of times, or African children would die. She feels distress at the anger and sadness she causes her family, but she feels she has to engage in these behaviors for their own good. She’s only trying to help; why are they so mad? This conflict was horrible for her self-esteem: “When you’re little and told all the time that the world doesn’t revolve around you but all you have to do is take a look at all the upset faces and eyebrows turned down…it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, though the world may not be revolving around you, it sure is a pretty damn fucked-up place because you’re in it” (146). Foust’s relationship with her family would be a paradox of love and resentment, of dependence on them and repudiation of them. Not diagnosed until her late teens, Foust struggled all through school. She resorted to self-medication with Nyquil and Benadryl. She describes anxious feelings vividly as well as the resultant impossible urge to get away from herself. Writing and acting, however, helped her feel more in control of her life. She details how some therapy, including exposure therapy, helped somewhat. Eventually, she was prescribed medication, which also helped somewhat. Foust details the financial struggles regarding getting therapy and medication. She also does a great job expressing the frustration of the chronic nature of OCD, especially when therapy-only (without medication) does not take away enough symptoms. She bursts out at one psychiatrist: “I journal all the time, but are we going to have to journal and pick apart every damn thing all the time? Forever?” (289). Foust can be caustic and sarcastic as well as sensitive and insightful. She makes some very witty remarks about people who don’t understand OCD in the interview at the back of the book. Traig, Jennifer. Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood. New York: Little, Brown, 2004. Print. This account opens with Traig in the middle of one of her OCD crises—where else, but in a laundry room? A little decontextualized at first, the scenes steadily braid together into a picture of a wry and sarcastic family, parented by two medical professionals, one Catholic and the other Jewish, dealing with a disease that nobody knew what to call or how to treat in the 1970s and ’80s in an out-of-the-way farm town in northern California. As one would expect, Traig uses lots of precise detail to explain how her OCD manifested itself in contamination fears, but these aren’t any ordinary contamination fears. These are elaborately convoluted interpretations of Jewish laws about keeping Kosher. Traig not only experienced scrupulosity but also anorexia, intrusive images, and driving issues throughout the course of her disorder. It got to the point at which she couldn’t walk from place to place or carry on a conversation because she hadn’t properly thought through whatever her concern was at any given moment. Traig really gets right her description of re-thinking of things until the train of thought feels finished or right. Many of Traig’s experiences resonated with my own experiences of contamination fears, even though mine were not rooted in Judaism, and this book was one of my favorite reads during the project. Wortmann, Fletcher. Triggered: A Memoir of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. New York: St. Martin’s, 2012. Print. Wortmann’s voice as a twenty-something pop culture geek with a smart, sarcastic sense of humor really comes through in this memoir. For example, he explains that the advice to worry less that he was given by one misguided therapist, who didn’t recognize his OCD or its severity, “was insufficient to overwrite the cognitive mechanisms I had excruciatingly constructed over nineteen years of mental illness; the therapeutic equivalent of giving a Snoopy bandage to a victim of flesh-eating parasites” (88). Wortmann’s memoir is also noteworthy because it focuses a lot on what is sometimes called “Pure O,” which is suffered by people who have mostly obsessions and not so many visible compulsions. Wortmann notes that clinicians and the media are quick to fixate on the stereotypical and visible compulsions like hand-washing or counting and not give attention to or even be aware of the fact that some people are tormented almost exclusively by their thoughts. And, more distressingly, these people will be less likely to seek help for fear of being perceived as dangerous. They may also be misdiagnosed and mistreated as a danger to others when really the dark thoughts cause them worry because they are good people who would never act on these thoughts. Wortmann describes the violent thoughts and religious scrupulosity that plagued him. Wortmann thoughtfully and thoroughly describes his experience undergoing Exposure and Response Prevention (or ERP, a type of behavior therapy). The only thing he really neglects to discuss is the nature of his medication. He mentions the names Effexor, Cymbalta, and Wellbutrin, but doesn’t explain that Effexor and Cymbalta are selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SSNRIs) and how this class of drugs works, as well as why these and the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are often effective in treating OCD. Sometimes, Wortmann’s exaggerated pronouncements like, “My brain chemistry was at this point well and thoroughly fucked by Cymbalta and Wellbutrin” (235) or his dedication of the book to “other psychopaths, we souls that suffer” might perpetuate the fears of medication and the stigma against mental illness that Wortmann attempts to dispel in most of the rest of his text. SchizophreniaBartok, Mira. The Memory Palace: A Memoir. New York: Free Press, 2011. Print. After suffering a traumatic brain injury, Bartok, who took her name from the beloved musician when she needed to hide from her untreated schizophrenic mother, uses the classical pneumonic device of a memory palace to structure her narrative. Each chapter begins with an image that corresponds to a “room” in a mental “palace” that helps give structure to a collection of memories to help preserve them. Bartok’s account is exhaustive, detailing her memories from early childhood to adulthood of being the child of a parent suffering from mental illness, from the 1960s to her mother’s death in 2007. Since the account covers so many decades, we see the impact of deinstitutionalization on Bartok’s mother Norma. The account also includes excerpts from Norma’s letters and diaries, and most chapters begin with musings by Bartok or her mother as well as cultural maxims or quotations from literary and visual artists. Costello, Victoria. A Lethal Inheritance: A Mother Uncovers the Science Behind Three Generations of Mental Illness. Amherst: Prometheus, 2012. Print. A mother of two sons with mental illness, science journalist Victoria Costello has created a book that weaves together her family members’ experiences with mental illness as well as scholarly research she has done. Costello confronts her own depression and goes back into her family’s genealogy to research her ancestors’ substance abuse problems and probable mental illness. The book is more science than memoir, which may be off-putting to some readers, but for sophisticated readers, the science is current and relevant. Costello considers the following areas in depth: interaction between genetics and the environment, prevention and early intervention in the treatment of mental illness, and the effects of medication on personality and creativity. It’s a little concerning that toward the end of the book, her son, who suffers from schizophrenia, decides to stop his medication because, as he asserts, he is an “artist” and not an “MBA” (193). We’re never told the outcome of this decision. A good discussion could ensue about the big question as to whether stability and creativity are compatible. Costello also discusses how one scientist found that genetic variants “that are loosely associated with severe mental disorders…[can be] present in many healthy people [and] may have an advantage enabling us to think more creatively” (Keri qtd. in 193). The question arises as to how can we harness the positive power of these genetic variants but avoid the negative consequences of mental illness suffered by some people who carry them? What makes the genetic material confer creativity alone on one person and mental illness (and creativity) on another? Holman, Virginia. Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories from a Decade Gone Mad. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Print.In this account, Holman recounts her mother’s breakdown and the years before she was institutionalized. When Holman was about nine years old, in 1975, her mother moved her and her toddler sister away from their Virginia Beach townhouse and their father to a small cottage owned by her family in a remote part of Virginia. Initially confused, treating the situation like a marital problem, Holman’s father remained in Virginia Beach and visited the cottage on the weekends. Convinced his wife wasn’t coming back to the family home but wanted to live with him, he got a new job and relocated to the cottage. The bulk of Holman’s memoir relates the strange few years at the cottage, which were filled with both idyllic summer-type adventures by the children as well as terror inflicted by Holman’s mother’s psychosis. Holman’s mother, Molly, was convinced she was selected to assist refugee children in a war that no one else knew about. Molly’s relationships with local family members were often strained. At one point, she allowed her toddler to drink Clorox, and it was unclear whether this was an accident or not. Young Virginia takes to escaping to the wilderness and eventually even finding religion to get peace. Sometimes, she wishes her mother would leave or die. Finally, the Holman’s father demanded that the family move to Fairfield, a suburb of Richmond, Virginia. As years pass and the family struggles with laws against involuntary commitment, Molly’s condition deteriorates. Ultimately, after Virginia has gone to college, she convinces her father and sister to move out and let Molly and the house deteriorate until things are bad enough to get her hospitalized. As of the book’s publication, Molly lives in a nursing home and still suffers from frequent delusions. The title was chosen because the Patty Hearst incident, in which an heiress was kidnapped and brainwashed into committing crimes, serves as an analogy for Virginia Holman about the sort of double life that she leads as the child of a schizophrenic. She tries to put on a good face and function in society but at home she is forced to cope with and even participate in her mother’s delusions. She wonders if she can ever go back to normal as an adult after such a childhood: “Citizen Tania could never have existed without the erasure of Patty. But what about when it was all over and Tania wanted to be Patty again? How did Tania ever manage to rescue Patty Hearst? I imagine that Patty hated her history the same way I hate mine. And that she wondered too: After such a life, how will I ever manage to become myself?” (229). Saks, Elyn R. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. Hyperion, 2007. Kindle E-book.With its title taken from the line from William Butler Yeats’ famous poem, “The Second Coming,” this is THE classic schizophrenia memoir, the one most discussions of the genre refer to. Saks describes the onset of her symptoms over the years, particularly during her college and graduate school years. Saks struggled for a long time with the idea that “People ought to get better because they work at it, not because they take some pill…Taking pills is cheating” (Ch. 5). For a long time, Saks was treated with psychotherapy instead of medication, and she now insists upon the value of both despite the fact that many experts place most of their emphasis on medical treatment of schizophrenia: “While medication had kept me alive, it had been psychoanalysis that had helped me find a life worth living” (Ch. 22). She describes her hospitalizations and her objections to restraints being used on psychiatric patients. Saks struggled with medication compliance as well as with side effects that damaged her health and impaired her ability to read, a big problem for a law professor. Saks ultimately discusses how she accepted her illness and the role it plays in her identity, career, and relationships. Schiller, Lori and Amanda Bennett. The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness. New York: Warner Books, 1994. Print. In 1982, high achieving college graduate, Lori Schiller, was diagnosed with shizo-affective disorder: “a combination of things…some symptoms of manic-depression and some symptoms of schizophrenia” (69). This memoir is told from the varying points of view of Lori, her mother, her father, her brothers, a friend, and a doctor, and includes hospital notes as well. Lori and her family journey from denial of her illness to insight, each at his/her own pace. Lori’s mom Nancy realizes some of Lori’s symptoms were present in Nancy’s mother. Lori tries hospitalization, living at home, living in halfway houses, and self-medicating with cocaine. Lori goes back and forth from seeing the voices as her allies against the establishment to realizing she needs hospitalization, particularly when her defiance almost gets her thrown out of a hospital. Lori discusses how, depending on how they are utilized, “quiet rooms” can cause agitation and abuse in the very people they are supposed to help, or they can be sanctuaries where patients can go to calm themselves and mollify a flare-up of symptoms. Lori’s most helpful therapeutic environment focused on “understanding your own illness, and learning to live with it…learning to recognize the warning signs before you flipped out, and to get help fast” (196-7) as opposed to “On the other units, the emphasis had seemed to be on getting better and getting out. I had always felt pressure to show progress…In the past, I had felt…All we needed to do was flip the right switch…and Presto! The problem would be solved” (196). Dr. Doller explains that, instead, “we are going to try to get you better. But you’re never going to be able to go all the way back…You are going to have to learn to work with the person you are now. You’re going to have to learn to live with the voices” (219). Lori struggles with many issues, including medication-induced weight gain and muscular side effects. Worst of all, no matter what kind or how many medications the psychiatrists prescribed, nothing made Lori’s voices disappear almost completely until Clozapine became available on an experimental basis in 1989. After this point, Lori was able to make an amazing transformation ultimately living on her own (after a halfway house), working, advocating, dating, re-establishing friendships, and dealing with relapses. The transformation was not easy, as Lori discusses how she at first “miss[ed]” the voices (263) and feared being able to live in an unstructured environment. But she also describes the feelings she had of subtle emotions returning, thoughts becoming clearer, affect and body language improving, and the desire to have relationships returning.Schofield, Michael. January First: A Child’s Descent into Madness and Her Father’s Struggle to Save Her. New York: Crown, 2012. Print. This account is unique in that it focuses on the rare phenomenon of childhood-onset (versus adolescent-onset) schizophrenia. Jani’s case has been widely publicized on TV and in the L.A. Times. See also the blog, . Steele, Ken and Claire Berman. The Day the Voices Stopped: A Memoir of Madness and Hope. New York: Basic, 2001. Print. Ken Steele was unfortunate enough to come down with symptoms of schizophrenia in 1962, an era during which mental illness was sadly misunderstood. Rejected on different occasions by his family, Ken would fall prey to homelessness and prostitution. Derogatory voices often told him to kill himself, and he tried many times. Steele describes the humiliating practices of mental institutions, such as the staff talking about him rather than addressing him directly. One professional dismissed the significance of one of the medications’ side effects being Ken’s not being able to read (one of his only comforts). Finally, with the help of Risperdal in 1994, Ken was able to get enough relief from his symptoms to become a leading advocate for the mentally ill, or, to use the term he prefers, “mental health consumers” (159). Ken discusses the difficulties in the transformation, including fear when his decades-long companions, the voices, actually stopped. He also discusses how he and many other individuals can become “system-addicted” (204) and actually prefer dependence upon institutional life rather than “face the challenges of a new life. The freedom that came with being ‘normal’ was threatening” (204). Unfortunately, Ken Steele died in his early 50s from complications from decades of medication and homelessness.Wagner, Pamela Spiro and Carolyn S. Spiro. Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia. New York: St. Martin’s, 2005. Print. This book is a good example of the co-authorship of a mental illness memoir by the ill person and a well relative. It is fascinating to see some of the same events through the different perspectives of the two sisters. Pamela, who got more recognition for her scholastic success growing up, became gradually sicker and sicker with schizophrenia which appeared in early adolescence when voices told her she was responsible for President Kennedy’s assassination. For a long time, she and her family, even, at a point, including her psychologist sister Carolyn, denied that Pamela had schizophrenia. For years, Pam would not tell medical professionals about the voices that she heard, making diagnosis more difficult. Pamela endured years of suffering during which most antipsychotic medications did not help her sufficiently. She repeatedly stopped taking medication and caused her condition to deteriorate. Pamela suffered from narcolepsy as well as schizophrenia, and both sisters were anorexic for a time during their adolescence. For Pamela, this was a way of trying to disappear in response to the voices that convinced her she was evil. Pamela also suffered bouts of cutting. This part of the story illustrates how important the issue of dual diagnosis is and how one problem, such as an eating disorder or cutting, can be related to another mental illness. The most effective medication for Pamela was Zyprexa, but the side effect of eighty pounds of weight gain is so unpleasant for her that she still had periods of noncompliance with medication. Eventually she did agree to try ECT, but there is no indication in the memoir that the results were helpful. Most of Pamela’s adult life has been characterized by repeated hospitalizations and instability when trying to live on her own or in halfway houses, though she is an accomplished poet. As of the book’s publication, there was no sense that a long-term satisfactory treatment or long-term stability had been achieved.VariousOxford University Press’ Adolescent Mental Health Initiative Series. This series consists of seven important books in the burgeoning field of young adult nonfiction. With more accessible language and shorter length than most pieces of adult nonfiction, these are highly accurate and well-researched books aimed at the teen suffering from mental illness. Coauthored by a teen sufferer of mental illness and a mental health professional, each book in the series weaves together stories of personal experience with the illness, scientific information about the illness, and practical tips for living with the illness. Topics covered by individual works within the series include suicide, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance abuse, and social anxiety. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download