The Center Cannot Hold My Journey Through Madness

Author : Elyn R. Saks
Publisher : Hachette UK
ISBN 13 : 1401389546
Total Pages : 478 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Center Cannot Hold written by Elyn R. Saks and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2007-08-14 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A much-praised memoir of living and surviving mental illness as well as "a stereotype-shattering look at a tenacious woman whose brain is her best friend and her worst enemy" (Time). Elyn R. Saks is an esteemed professor, lawyer, and psychiatrist and is the Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, Psychiatry, and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Law School, yet she has suffered from schizophrenia for most of her life, and still has ongoing major episodes of the illness. The Center Cannot Hold is the eloquent, moving story of Elyn's life, from the first time that she heard voices speaking to her as a young teenager, to attempted suicides in college, through learning to live on her own as an adult in an often terrifying world. Saks discusses frankly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, the voices in her head telling her to kill herself (and to harm others), as well as the incredibly difficult obstacles she overcame to become a highly respected professional. This beautifully written memoir is destined to become a classic in its genre.

Author : Elyn R. Saks
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226733998
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Refusing Care written by Elyn R. Saks and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been said that how a society treats its least well-off members speaks volumes about its humanity. If so, our treatment of the mentally ill suggests that American society is inhumane: swinging between overintervention and utter neglect, we sometimes force extreme treatments on those who do not want them, and at other times discharge mentally ill patients who do want treatment without providing adequate resources for their care in the community. Focusing on overinterventionist approaches, Refusing Care explores when, if ever, the mentally ill should be treated against their will. Basing her analysis on case and empirical studies, Elyn R. Saks explores dilemmas raised by forced treatment in three contexts—civil commitment (forced hospitalization for noncriminals), medication, and seclusion and restraints. Saks argues that the best way to solve each of these dilemmas is, paradoxically, to be both more protective of individual autonomy and more paternalistic than current law calls for. For instance, while Saks advocates relaxing the standards for first commitment after a psychotic episode, she also would prohibit extreme mechanical restraints (such as tying someone spread-eagled to a bed). Finally, because of the often extreme prejudice against the mentally ill in American society, Saks proposes standards that, as much as possible, should apply equally to non-mentally ill and mentally ill people alike. Mental health professionals, lawyers, disability rights activists, and anyone who wants to learn more about the way the mentally ill are treated—and ought to be treated—in the United States should read Refusing Care.

Author : Arnhild Lauveng
Publisher : Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1620879131
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Road Back from Schizophrenia written by Arnhild Lauveng and published by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Lori Schiller
Publisher : Grand Central Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780446549356
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Quiet Room written by Lori Schiller and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2008-11-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, Lori Schiller's memoir is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage. At seventeen Lori Schiller was the perfect child-the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit family. Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia. She began an ordeal of hospitalizations, halfway houses, relapses, more suicide attempts, and constant, withering despair. But against all odds, she survived. In this personal account, she tells how she did it, taking us not only into her own shattered world, but drawing on the words of the doctors who treated her and family members who suffered with her.

Author : Gayathri Ramprasad
Publisher : Random House India
ISBN 13 : 8184006535
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Shadows in the Sun written by Gayathri Ramprasad and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a young girl in Bangalore, Gayathri was surrounded by the fragrance of jasmine and flickering oil lamps, her family protected by gods and goddesses. But as she grew older, demons came forth from dark corners of her idyllic kingdom—with the scariest creatures lurking within her tortured mind. Shadows in the Sun traces Gayathri’s courageous battle with debilitating depression that consumed her from adolescence through marriage and a move to the United States. Her inspiring memoir provides a first-of-its-kind cross-cultural view of mental illness—how it is regarded in India and in America, and how she drew on both her rich Hindu heritage and Western medicine to find healing.

Author : Pamela Spiro Wagner
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780312320652
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Divided Minds written by Pamela Spiro Wagner and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-08-08 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relates the stories of a pair of identical twin sisters, a schizophrenic and a psychiatrist, in an account that traces the deterioration of the favored sister into mental illness, and the other's emergence from her troubled sibling's shadow.

Author : Stephen Hinshaw
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1250113369
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Another Kind of Madness written by Stephen Hinshaw and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parallel to An Unquiet Mind and The Glass Castle, a deeply personal memoir calling for the destigmatization of mental illness

Author : Michael Greenberg
Publisher : Other Press, LLC
ISBN 13 : 1590513258
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hurry Down Sunshine written by Michael Greenberg and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2008-09-09 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Hurry Down Sunshine is about tenacity and tenderness...but mostly it’s about love.” —OPRAH WINFREY AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH PICK This international bestseller is an extraordinary family story and an exceptionally powerful memoir about coping withbipolar disorder, now with a new afterword for the ten-year anniversary edition. Michael Greenberg recounts in vivid detail the remarkable summer when, at the age of fifteen, his daughter was struck mad. It begins with Sally's sudden visionary crack-up on the streets of Greenwich Village, and continues, among other places, in the out-of-time world of a Manhattan psychiatric ward during the city's sweltering summer. It is a tale of a family broken open, then painstakingly, movingly stitched together again. Greenberg's unforgettable cast of characters includes an unconventional psychiatrist, an Orthodox Jewish patient, a manic Classics professor, a movie producer, and a landlord with literary aspirations. Unsentimental, nuanced, and deeply humane, Hurry Down Sunshine is essential reading in the literature of affliction with such classics as Girl, Interrupted and An Unquiet Mind.

Author : Kristina Morgan
Publisher : Hazelden Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1616494603
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mind Without a Home written by Kristina Morgan and published by Hazelden Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experience the inner world of a woman with schizophrenia in this brutally honest, lyrical memoir. Have you ever wondered what it is like in the mind of a person with Schizophrenia? How can one survive day after day unable to distinguish between one’s inner nightmares and the everyday realities that most of us take for granted? In her brutally honest, highly original memoir, Kristina Morgan takes us inside her head to experience the chaos, fragmented thinking, and the startling creativity of the schizophrenic mind. With the intimacy of private journal-like entries and the language of a poet, she carries us from her childhood to her teen years when hallucinations began to hijack her mind and into adulthood where she began abusing alcohol to temper the punishing voices that only she could hear. This is no formulaic tale of tragedy and triumph: We feel Kristina’s hope as she pursues an education and career and begins to build strong family connections, friendships and intimacy—and her devastation as the insistent voices convince her to throw it all away, destroying herself and alienating everyone around her. Woven through the pages of her life are stories of recovery from alcoholism and the search for her sexual identity in relationships with both women and men. Eventually, her journey takes her to a place of relative peace and stability where she finds the inner resources and support system to manage her chronic illnesses and live a fulfilling life.

Author : Elyn R. Saks
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780814797648
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jekyll on Trial written by Elyn R. Saks and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we find multiple personality disorder (MPD) so fascinating? Perhaps because each of us is aware of a dividedness within ourselves: we often feel as if we are one person on the job, another with our families, another with our friends and lovers. We may fantasize that these inner discrepancies will someday break free, that within us lie other personalities - genius, lover, criminal - that will take us over and render us strangers to our very selves. What happens when such a transformation literally occurs, when an alter personality surfaces and commits some heinous deed?