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.

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.

Surviving Schizophrenia

Surviving Schizophrenia PDF Author: E. Fuller Torrey
Publisher: HarpPeren
ISBN: 9780060950767
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
The third edition of this indispensable manual thoroughly details everything patients, families, and mental health professionals need to know about one of the most widespread and misunderstood illnesses.

The Family Face of Schizophrenia

The Family Face of Schizophrenia PDF Author: Patricia Backlar
Publisher: Tarcher
ISBN: 9780874777901
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Personal narratives followed by advice from health experts

Growing Up with a Schizophrenic Mother

Growing Up with a Schizophrenic Mother PDF Author: Margaret J. Brown
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786480300
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
An estimated two to three million people in the United States today were raised by a schizophrenic parent. Brown and Roberts offer a unique book based on interviews with over forty adult children of mothers diagnosed as schizophrenic. Such topics as the isolation their family felt, their chaotic home environments, their present relationships with their mothers, and the lost potential of mother and child are covered. Their stories are fascinating and provide important information to both the mental health community and the lay public. The offspring have been described as having higher rates of "increased aggressivity" and "sibling conflict," but often their circumstances strengthened these children and contributed to artistic and creative talents, resiliency, and high achievements. The authors provide an overview of schizophrenia, behaviors of the affected parent, and the marital relationship of the patient and her non-schizophrenic spouse. As adults, the respondents now share their grievances about the psychological community--what they needed and did not get. Brown and Roberts then present suggestions for treatment of affected children aimed at psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, and health care providers.

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.

Stalking Irish Madness

Stalking Irish Madness PDF Author: Patrick Tracey
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553905597
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story, Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and solve the mystery of his Irish-American family's multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia. For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an occasion to revisit their family's roots. But for Patrick Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to confront the genealogical mystery of schizophrenia–a disease that had claimed a great-great-great-grandmother, a grandmother, an uncle, and, most recently, two sisters. As long as Tracey could remember, schizophrenia ran on his mother's side, seldom spoken of outright but impossible to ignore. Devastated by the emotional toll the disease had already taken on his family, terrified of passing it on to any children he might have, and inspired by the recent discovery of the first genetic link to schizophrenia, Tracey followed his genealogical trail from Boston to Ireland's county Roscommon, home of his oldest-known schizophrenic ancestor. In a renovated camper, Tracey crossed the Emerald Isle to investigate the country that, until the 1960s, had the world's highest rate of institutionalization for mental illness, following clues and separating fact from fiction in the legendary relationship the Irish have had with madness. Tracey's path leads from fairy mounds and ancient caverns still shrouded in superstition to old pubs whose colorful inhabitants are a treasure trove of local lore. He visits the massive and grim asylum where his famine starved ancestors may have lived. And he interviews the Irish research team that first cracked the schizophrenic code to learn how much–and how little–we know about this often misunderstood disease. Filled with history, science, and lore, Stalking Irish Madness is an unforgettable chronicle of one man's attempt to make sense of his family's past and to find hope for the future of schizophrenic patients. From the Hardcover edition.

Surviving Schizophrenia, 7th Edition

Surviving Schizophrenia, 7th Edition PDF Author: E. Fuller Torrey
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062893459
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Updated throughout and filled with all the latest research, treatment plans, commonly asked questions and more, the bestselling resource on schizophrenia is back—now in its seventh edition. “E. Fuller Torrey is a brilliant writer. There is no one writing on psychology today whom I would rather read.”— Los Angeles Times Since its first publication in 1983, Surviving Schizophrenia has become the standard reference book on the disease that has helped thousands of patients, their families, and mental health professionals alike. In clear language, this much-praised and important book describes the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment, and course of schizophrenia, and explores living with it from both the patient’s and the family’s point of view. This new, completely updated seventh edition includes the latest research findings on what causes the illness, as well as information about the newest drugs for treatment, and answers the questions most often asked by families, consumers, and providers. An indispensable guide for those afflicted by schizophrenia as well as those who care for them, Surviving Schizophrenia covers every aspect of the condition and sheds new light on an often-misunderstood illness.

A Road Back from Schizophrenia

A Road Back from Schizophrenia PDF Author: Arnhild Lauveng
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1620879131
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
For ten years, Arnhild Lauveng suffered as a schizophrenic, going in and out of the hospital for months or even a year at a time. A Road Back from Schizophrenia gives extraordinary insight into the logic (and life) of a schizophrenic. Lauveng illuminates her loss of identity, her sense of being controlled from the outside, and her relationship to the voices she heard and her sometimes terrifying hallucinations. Painful recollections of moments of humiliation inflicted by thoughtless medical professionals are juxtaposed with Lauveng’s own understanding of how such patients are outwardly irrational and often violent. She paints a surreal world—sometimes full of terror and sometimes of beauty—in which “the Captain” rules her by the rod and the school’s corridors are filled with wolves. When she was diagnosed with the mental illness, it was emphasized that this was a congenital disease, and that she would have to live with it for the rest of her life. Today, however, she calls herself a “former schizophrenic,” has stopped taking medication for the illness, and currently works as a clinical psychologist. Lauveng, though sometimes critical of mental health care, ultimately attributes her slow journey back to health to the dedicated medical staff who took the time to talk to her and who saw her as a person simply diagnosed with an illness—not the illness incarnate. A powerful memoir for sufferers, their families, and the professionals who care for them.

Our Voices

Our Voices PDF Author: Colette Corr, Michael Dunn, Manisha Kapil, Claudia Moon and Pickens Miller
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1440110395
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Can you imagine giving voice to your greatest fears? Can you imagine wondering if what you know is true? Can you imagine being told you have schizophrenia? Who would you talk to? What would you do? We have experienced these very things. We are people who live every day with schizophrenia, and we want to share our stories. Our Voices tells you what it's like to be diagnosed with a major mental illness, to live with symptoms, and to navigate the mental health system. We created this book to share our personal perspectives and to illuminate the shared perceptions, experiences and challenges people with schizophrenia face. Colette, Manisha, Michael, Claudia and Pickens, the masterminds and architects of Our Voices, are writers, painters, poets, swimmers, activists, volunteers, readers, friends, and family members. Here they share their voices and those of 20 others, to illustrate the daily experience of schizophrenia.

Understanding Schizophrenia

Understanding Schizophrenia PDF Author: Ravinder D. Reddy MD
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Written by two physicians with decades of clinical and research experience in the field, this volume helps readers face schizophrenia by understanding what it is and how it is managed. Schizophrenia is a devastating illness that affects more than two million Americans. Written to help anyone who is faced with managing schizophrenia, whether as a patient, friend, or family member, this accessible book is an ideal first stop for practical, up-to-date information. It includes an overview of schizophrenic disorder and provides answers to common questions that arise at different phases of the illness. This brief and to-the-point guide focuses on dealing with many aspects of schizophrenia—complying with treatment, managing crises, being a caregiver, communicating with the care team, and coping skills. The book also provides practical approaches to common issues, such as financial support, housing, employment, interacting with the legal system, stress management, socialization, and negative emotions. Included are useful forms, lists, and a comprehensive collection of resources to access help and information. The goal of this book is to assist patients and their loved ones to effectively face schizophrenia, achieve maximal recovery, and enjoy a good quality of life.