Family Experiences with Mental Illness

Family Experiences with Mental Illness PDF Author: Gail Gamache
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031339024X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Tessler and Gamache provide substantial research on the impact of mental illness on the family through interviews conducted with hundreds of family members between 1989 and 1997. According to the authors, how families experience the mental illness of a relative depends on many social factors, including how public mental health services are organized and financed, and whether families feel judged or supported by professionals. Most family members experience a range of emotions toward one another ranging from warmth and gratification to anger and rejection. Tessler and Gamache detail the family experience with mental illness in terms of both negative and positive feelings. They take a holistic approach to the family experience and present a variety of family responses and dilemmas. The family members whose stories are told are diverse in respect to race, gender, age, and relationship, and the demographic-clinical characteristics of their relatives with mental illness. Tessler and Gamache find that the amount of burden that family members experience depends, in part, on which dimension of burden is being addressed. When burden is defined as assistance in daily living, it is less than what was thought. On the other hand, the subjective burden associated with supervision and control is substantial. Family role and residence contribute to most dimensions of burden. For example, a mother living with an adult son with schizophrenia will experience mental illness differently than the brother who has moved out of the family home and moved to another state. In both studies, a major finding involved lower than expected expenditures by family members for medication and mental health treatment in both studies. Most expenditures were focused instead on personal or survival needs, which for a sub-sample of family members involves considerable expenditures. This work is an important research finding for scholars, students, and professionals involved with social work, public health, and public mental health policy.

Family Experiences with Mental Illness

Family Experiences with Mental Illness PDF Author: Gail Gamache
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031339024X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tessler and Gamache provide substantial research on the impact of mental illness on the family through interviews conducted with hundreds of family members between 1989 and 1997. According to the authors, how families experience the mental illness of a relative depends on many social factors, including how public mental health services are organized and financed, and whether families feel judged or supported by professionals. Most family members experience a range of emotions toward one another ranging from warmth and gratification to anger and rejection. Tessler and Gamache detail the family experience with mental illness in terms of both negative and positive feelings. They take a holistic approach to the family experience and present a variety of family responses and dilemmas. The family members whose stories are told are diverse in respect to race, gender, age, and relationship, and the demographic-clinical characteristics of their relatives with mental illness. Tessler and Gamache find that the amount of burden that family members experience depends, in part, on which dimension of burden is being addressed. When burden is defined as assistance in daily living, it is less than what was thought. On the other hand, the subjective burden associated with supervision and control is substantial. Family role and residence contribute to most dimensions of burden. For example, a mother living with an adult son with schizophrenia will experience mental illness differently than the brother who has moved out of the family home and moved to another state. In both studies, a major finding involved lower than expected expenditures by family members for medication and mental health treatment in both studies. Most expenditures were focused instead on personal or survival needs, which for a sub-sample of family members involves considerable expenditures. This work is an important research finding for scholars, students, and professionals involved with social work, public health, and public mental health policy.

Family Caregiving in Mental Illness

Family Caregiving in Mental Illness PDF Author: Harriet P. Lefley
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
With the trend of deinstitutionalization, family members are finding themselves increasingly in the position of primary caregivers to mentally ill adults - a role for which they are often untrained and unprepared. This volume explores the experiences of these caregivers. The author: discusses the characteristics and conceptual models related to mental illness; surveys the experience of mental illness in the context of the family life cycle and developmental stages of the illness; appraises the burdens on the family including social stigma, refusal of treatment, stress and the relationship between the mentally ill and caregivers within the family; and reviews family responses including coping strategies and professional and

The Family Guide to Mental Health Care

The Family Guide to Mental Health Care PDF Author: Lloyd I. Sederer MD
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393708810
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Advice on Helping Your Loved Ones, from the medical director of the country's largest state mental health system and the mental health editor of The Huffington Post More than fifty million people a year are diagnosed with some form of mental illness. It spares no sex, race, age, ethnicity, or income level. And left untreated, mental disorders can devastate our families and communities. Family members and friends are often the first to realize when someone has a problem, but it is hard to know how to help or where to turn. Our mental health “system” can feel like a bewildering and frustrating maze. How can you tell that someone has a mental illness? What are the first and best steps for you to take? Where do you go to find the right care? The Family Guide to Mental Health Care is the first comprehensive print resource for the millions of people who have loved ones suffering from some kind of mental illness. In this book, families can find the answers to their most urgent questions. What medications are helpful and are some as dangerous as I think? Is there a way to navigate privacy laws so I can discuss my adult daughter’s treatment with her doctor? Is my teenager experiencing typical adolescent distress or an illness? From understanding depression, bipolar illness and anxiety to eating and traumatic disorders, schizophrenia, and much more, readers will learn what to do and how to help. Real-life scenarios and authoritative information are written in a compassionate, reader-friendly way, including checklists to bring to a doctor’s appointment so you can ask the right questions. For readers who fear they will never see the light at the end of the tunnel, this book gives hope and a path forward. As one of the nation’s leading voices on quality care in mental health, Dr. Lloyd Sederer has played a singular role in advancing services for those with mental illness. Now, the wealth of his expertise and clear guidance is at your disposal. From the first signs of a problem to sorting through the variety of treatment options, you and your family will be able to walk into a doctor’s office know what to do and what to ask.

Troubled Journey

Troubled Journey PDF Author: Diane T. Marsh
Publisher: Tarcher
ISBN: 9780874778755
Category : Adult children of dysfunctional families
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
As it explores the nature of illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, and manic depression, this definitive guide for those affected by mental illness in the family provides the tools to overcome the devastating effects of growing up in a family where they exist. A list of resources is included.

Hidden Valley Road

Hidden Valley Road PDF Author: Robert Kolker
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385543778
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY • The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease. "Reads like a medical detective journey and sheds light on a topic so many of us face: mental illness." —Oprah Winfrey Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations. With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

Nothing to Hide

Nothing to Hide PDF Author: Jean J. Beard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781565847217
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Uses photographs and first person accounts edited from interviews with family members to profile forty-four families in which at least one member has been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness.

Breaking the Silence

Breaking the Silence PDF Author: Stephen P. Hinshaw
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195320263
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
In Living with Mental Illness, mental health professionals and scientists, ranging from newly trained individuals to seasoned clinicians and researchers, tell their own and their families' stories of mental disorder, providing an unprecedented level of honesty and disclosure. This volume will be indispensable reading for those in the mental health professions, trainees across many related fields, family members, persons contending with mental illness, and all those who wish to know more about the effects of mental illness on our society.

You are Not Alone

You are Not Alone PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mental health
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description


Helping Families Cope With Mental Illness

Helping Families Cope With Mental Illness PDF Author: Harriet P Lefley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134958374
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
In this age of spiraling health care costs, it is imperative that the family's role in treating patients with chronic mental illness not be overlooked - by policy makers and clinicians alike. The families themselves insist that the government and care-providing agencies learn new ways to relate to them and patients. Helping Families Cope with Mental Illness is a comprehensive guide to the family's experience of chronic and serious mental illness for clinicians and educators in a wide range of mental health disciplines. It details all major areas of the clinician-family relationship - consumer perspectives, cultural diversity, social policy, ethical issues, practical coping strategies, research and training issues, major service issues, managed care, and cost-saving measures.

Behind the Wall

Behind the Wall PDF Author: Mary Widdifield
Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group
ISBN: 1634132041
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Mental illness profoundly impacts family and loved ones. These seven true stories told by nine parents were selected from interviews conducted by sisters, Mary and Elin Widdifield, and interwoven with one sisters own experiences. Told with remarkable candor, these stories offer more insight than any single story or academic analysis. Behind the Wall provides a shared voice for millions of people who advocate for a child or loved one who lives with mental illness, fosters a better understanding for society at-large, and delivers a compelling and ultimately hopeful read for anyone fascinated by the human condition. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly twenty million Americans ages eighteen and older suffer from a serious mental illness. Sixty million - about one in four adults - suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Factor in the family members profoundly affected by a loved one's disorder and mental illness touches virtually all of us. Yet it remains a subject that is often misunderstood, rarely talked about, and frequently stigmatizing. When mental illness enters the national discussion, it typically comes in the wake of a violent tragedy, attracting temporary attention and further misunderstanding. Behind the Wall posits that while mental health professionals and policy makers provide invaluable perspectives, the true story of mental Illness can be told most accurately by the people in the trenches: the parents who watched it all unfold with their child in harrowing and heartfelt detail. Book jacket.