Download or read book A Letter to Schizophrenia from a Mother written by Alyse King and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A MOTHER'S DESCRIPTION OF SCHIZOPHRENIA A Letter to Schizophrenia ... you were a source of intense grief to my soul. You fought me to the end, but I endured your fury and became much stronger. I did not allow you to hinder me from moving on; in strength, I kept plowing through your murk. Your presence was profound and profoundly disturbing. I wanted you out of my life, which is why I fought so hard with all my strength to see you gone. AND, I WON THE FIGHT! From: A Victorious Mother SON Lovable boy who grew up to be popular and handsome with unique ambitions, suddenly RAVAGED by mental illness. DAUGHTER Beautiful girl who grew into a stunning, gracious, warm-hearted young lady surprisingly DIAGNOSED with mental illness. AND A MOTHER'S LOVE.

Download or read book Tastes Like War written by Grace M. Cho and published by Feminist Press at CUNY. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction Winner of the 2022 Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature A TIME and NPR Best Book of the Year in 2021 This evocative memoir of food and family history is "somehow both mouthwatering and heartbreaking... [and] a potent personal history" (Shelf Awareness). Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details—language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue and evolve for the rest of her life. Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia. In her mother’s final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parent’s childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother’s multiple voices at the table. And through careful listening over these shared meals, Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her—but also the things that kept her alive. “An exquisite commemoration and a potent reclamation.” —Booklist (starred review) “A wrenching, powerful account of the long-term effects of the immigrant experience.” —Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Growing Up With a Mentally Ill Mom written by Brian Williams and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Growing up, I was constantly on edge. I had a mentally ill mom, but I was too young to understand that back then. What I saw was a parent who both loved and hated me. I never knew, waking up each morning, whether my mother would embrace me with a hug and say, "How did you sleep, baby?" Or glare at me from across the kitchen counter as though she didn't recognize who I was. For many years, I hid my mother's diagnosis of schizophrenia. I thought to myself, 'No one will ever understand the special relationship I have with my mentally ill mother.' However, like many other mental illnesses, the more I educated myself about it, the less terrifying it was to speak openly about it." - Brian Williams This book looks at the impact of schizophrenia on familial relationships from the perspective of a child living with a mother who has been diagnosed with the disorder. Through storytelling, readers will come to understand how schizophrenia develops and the many ways it can affect family life. Included in the book are practical tips and strategies to help family members and friends who may know someone living with schizophrenia. The message of the book is one of hope: You can live a prosperous and meaningful life having a relative or parent with mental illness.

Download or read book Growing Up with a Schizophrenic Mother written by Margaret J. Brown and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atlanta psychotherapists Brown and Roberts draw from interviews with over 40 adult children of mothers diagnosed as schizophrenic to share their stories about the isolation their family felt, their chaotic home environments, their present relationships with their mothers, and the lost potential of mother and child. Based on the view of their informants on what the mental health community did not provide, they suggest new approaches to treating affected children. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Sooner Than Tomorrow written by Dede Ranahan and published by . This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to my world. My story is written in diary format. I wrote it from June 16, 2013, to June 15, 2014. What I didn't know, as I was writing, was that I was capturing the last year of my son's life. Pat died, unexpectedly, on July 23, 2014, in a hospital psych ward. Suddenly, my diary morphed into a more poignant record than I'd anticipated, and after he died, I discovered Pat had been making regular posts on Facebook. I decided to add his comments to my own. I like stories where I can extrapolate from the singular to the universal--that is where I can identify with a common denominator in another person's experience. One early reader of my diary said, "Your story is so relatable." That's what I hope other readers will say. You may relate to my story if: You have a child (chilldren) you love more than your own life. You have a child who suffers from serious mental illness. You've lost a child--no matter what age. You're a member of the sandwich generation. You treasure conversations with children--especially when they're your grandchildren. Your cat or your dog is in charge of your household. Your bones are beginning to creak. You wake up each morning with a huge hole in your heart but you know, somehow, some way, you have to get up and put one foot in front of the other. You enjoy reading the other side of history--about ordinary people and their daily lives. You have a sense of humor. You've been thinking of leaving something for your descendants--a letter, story, diary, song, painting, or poem--but you haven't gotten around to it. Maybe my diary will spur you on. More notes about the format: I've added a Before section (Scenes from the Trenches). Going in, I want the reader to know "Yes, Houston, we really do have a problem." I've divided my diary into quarters--Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. I introduce each with a poem--three of them are Pat's. I end with an After section I didn't see coming. As I was writing, I had no idea, from day to day, what stories were unfolding. I learn, right along with the reader, what will happen next. We're all on a journey. Thank you for going on this journey with me. Dede Dede posted her story in two-week increments at www.soonerthantomorrow.com. The following are readers' responses. Beautiful words with an undertone that has caught me . . . carrying me up and down. Such a good writer that I am grateful to be with you. I can borrow some courage here. --Janet So happy for the readers who will discover you. --Liz Dede, every one of your blog posts has a portion that I love so much that I take a screenshot and read it over and over. --Stacey Dede, I anxiously await each posting from your blog/book. You write with such skill, and not easy when it's so personal, but your passion sprinkled with humor are the reasons that this is successful. --Joan L. I've done this, the primal scream and the mother animal instinct. There can't be anything more painful, not even death. My son was a normal little boy and a normal young man until schizophrenia came calling. Now I feel so shattered. I love your diary. --J.H.D. I only this was a contrived drama. It's so visceral. You're an artist. --Heidi F.

Download or read book Hidden Valley Road written by Robert Kolker and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #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.

Download or read book Losing Dad Paranoid Schizophrenia written by Amanda LaPera and published by . This book was released on 2024-01-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No drugs. No alcohol. So, how does a fifty-three-year-old develop schizophrenia? That's the question puzzling Joseph's family when his mind descends into madness, filled with grandiose delusions and paranoia. He traverses several continents as a self-proclaimed prophet of God. Then he disappears.His wife and three kids race to find answers before he slips away forever. Their biggest fear-he will die a faceless stranger on the streets. Alone. Winner of a Benjamin Franklin Silver Award in the category of psychology, Losing Dad, Paranoid Schizophrenia: A Family's Search for Hope is a compelling true story told through multiple perspectives-the children, spouse, and patient; it offers a rare glimpse into a world that will either feel hauntingly familiar or shocking. The Foreword written by Xavier Amador, Ph.D., Founder, LEAP Institute, Author, I am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help! (Vida Press 2012) explains the neurological condition of anosognosia; provided supplemental materials include a list of resources; discussion of mental health laws; exclusive author and family member interviews; as well as reading guide questions useful for book clubs, classroom discussion, case study, or professional education for those in medical, mental health, law enforcement, political, and legal fields to better understand the societal and psychological impacts of mental illness, both as experienced by family caregivers and the community. Ideal for Advanced Topics in Psychopathology books portraying lived experiences. Severe mental illness affects one in seventeen and can develop inside any mind at any time. It impacts the entire family.

Download or read book Schizophrenia Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Everything Is Fine written by Vince Granata and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Granata was a thousand miles from home when he received shocking news that his younger brother, Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home. Devastated by the grief of losing his mother, Granata was also consumed by the act itself, so incomprehensible that it overshadows every happy memory of life growing up in a seemingly idyllic middle-class family. He decides to examine the disease that irrecoverably changed his family's destiny and piece together his brother's story. In the painstaking process of recovering the image of his remarkable mother and salvaging the love for his brother as Tim faces trial for their mother's murder, Granata provides a powerful and reaffirming portrait of loss and forgiveness. -- adapted from jacket

Download or read book Inferno written by Catherine Cho and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice "Inferno is a disturbing and masterfully told memoir, but it’s also an important one that pushes back against powerful taboos. . ." --The New York Times Book Review "Explosive" --Good Morning America "Sublime" --Bookpage (starred review) When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip’s end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity. In this unwaveringly honest, insightful, and often shocking memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She masterfully interweaves these parts of her past with a vivid, immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward. The result is a powerful exploration of psychosis and motherhood, at once intensely personal, yet holding within it a universal experience – of how we love, live and understand ourselves in relation to each other.

Download or read book Schizophrenia The Experiences of Patients and Families written by and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Edge of Every Day written by Marin Sardy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the starkly beautiful backdrop of Anchorage, Alaska, where she grew up, Marin Sardy weaves an extraordinarily affecting, fiercely intelligent account of the shapeless thief—the schizophrenia—that kept her mother immersed in a world of private delusion and later also manifested in her brother, ultimately claiming his life. Composed of exquisite, self-contained chapters that take us through three generations of this adventurous, artistic, and often haunted family, The Edge of Every Day draws in topics from neuroscience and evolution to the mythology and art rock to shape its brilliant inquiry into how the mind works. In the process, Sardy casts new light on the treatment of the mentally ill in our society. Through it all runs her blazing compassion and relentless curiosity, as her meditations takes us to the very edge of love and loss—and signal the arrival of an important new literary voice.

Download or read book The Memory Palace written by Mira Bartok and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gorgeous memoir about the 17 year estrangement of the author and her homeless schizophrenic mother, and their reunion.

Download or read book Born Schizophrenic written by Susan Schofield and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-05-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When Susan Schofield's daughter, January (Jani) was diagnosed with child-onset schizophrenia at six, the dreams she and her husband had for their family's future became delusional, much like the illness itself. Their toddler son Bodhi was their hope, a savior for Jani. He would look after her when their parents were no longer around. But this was not to be. At two, Bodhi was diagnosed with autism and began decompensating even with the best early intervention therapy. The semi-sequel to Michael Schofield's book, 'January First' starts at the beginning of Susan and Michael's life together. It chronicles the joys and heartbreak of parenting special needs children, and the chaos that can bring to a family and a marriage. It ends with Susan and Michael finding love and even happiness while their struggle to help their children continues. But, as is so often the case, the journey is more interesting than the final destination." from the back cover.

Download or read book Growing Up with a Schizophrenic Mother written by Margaret J. Brown and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2000-08-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book January First written by Michael Schofield and published by Crown. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Schofield’s daughter January is at the mercy of her imaginary friends, except they aren’t the imaginary friends that most young children have; they are hallucinations. And January is caught in the conflict between our world and their world, a place she calls Calalini. Some of these hallucinations, like “24 Hours,” are friendly and some, like “400 the Cat” and “Wednesday the Rat,” bite and scratch her until she does what they want. They often tell her to scream at strangers, jump out of buildings, and attack her baby brother. At six years old, January Schofield, “Janni,” to her family, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, one of the worst mental illnesses known to man. What’s more, schizophrenia is 20 to 30 times more severe in children than in adults and in January’s case, doctors say, she is hallucinating 95 percent of the time that she is awake. Potent psychiatric drugs that would level most adults barely faze her. A New York Times bestseller, January First captures Michael and his family's remarkable story in a narrative that forges new territory within books about mental illness. In the beginning, readers see Janni’s incredible early potential: her brilliance, and savant-like ability to learn extremely abstract concepts. Next, they witnesses early warning signs that something is not right, Michael’s attempts to rationalize what’s happening, and his descent alongside his daughter into the abyss of schizophrenia. Their battle has included a two-year search for answers, countless medications and hospitalizations, allegations of abuse, despair that almost broke their family apart and, finally, victories against the illness and a new faith that they can create a life for Janni filled with moments of happiness. A compelling, unsparing and passionate account, January First vividly details Schofield’s commitment to bring his daughter back from the edge of insanity. It is a father’s soul-baring memoir of the daily struggles and challenges he and his wife face as they do everything they can to help Janni while trying to keep their family together.

Download or read book Primary Gift written by Kelly F. Holland and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in my life, I faced great challenges. I could not be a child like my siblings or my classmates. My journey was different. In my school, I learned about schizophrenia and physical violence. My teacher was very powerful. As an adolescent I lost my way. I became a ward of the court and completed my high school education while living in a state group home. In 1989, at age twenty-six, I met an exemplary professional who began to show me the way. For the next twenty years and beyond, I learned lessons of discipline, love, and respect for self and others. Soon, my life's success began to unfold. At age twenty-six, I received my life's primary gift. In 1999, I became on fire for my life, because of the excellence that I had witnessed in another person. I began to dream of talking to the world about the excellence that lives within each one of us. I relocated my life to the desert Southwest. It was there that I began to hear my heart's song and awaken to the excellence of my life's journey. It was there that I discovered the wisdom of my life's teachings. I believe that no matter what circumstances you may find yourself in, excellence is present. And, no matter how desolate you may feel, when you find the fire, the inspiration, and the music of your heart there isn't anything that can keep you from living your life's dreams. ♥♥♥