Schizophrenia Books

Center Cannot Hold, The: My Journey Through Madness

Elyn R. Saks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Elyn Saks is a success by any measure: she’s an endowed professor at the prestigious University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She has managed to achieve this in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a "grave" prognosis -- and suffering the effects of her illness throughout her life.

Saks was only eight, and living an otherwise idyllic childhood in sunny 1960s Miami, when her first symptoms appeared in the form of obsessions and night terrors. But it was not until she reached Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar that her first full-blown episode, complete with voices in her head and terrifying suicidal fantasies, forced her into a psychiatric hospital.

Saks would later attend Yale Law School where one night, during her first term, she had a breakdown that left her singing on the roof of the law school library at midnight. She was taken to the emergency room, force-fed antipsychotic medication, and tied hand-and-foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed. She spent the next five months in a psychiatric ward.

So began Saks’s long war with her own internal demons and the equally powerful forces of stigma. Today she is a chaired professor of law who researches and writes about the rights of the mentally ill. She is married to a wonderful man.

In The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks discusses frankly and movingly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, and the voices in her head insisting she do terrible things, as well as the many obstacles she overcame to become the woman she is today. It is destined to become a classic in the genre.

Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Consumers, and Providers (4th Edition)

E. Fuller Torrey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Outdated, Somewhat Helpful but Incomplete 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book has a little bit of everything... from history of schizophrenia to progresses in modern treatment. But for someone who wanted a greater insight into how I can better help a schizophrenic, it wasn't very helpful. For example, this book barely touches on how to get those afflicted with schizophrenia to take medication when they deny their illness and refuse their medication. How do you get them to see a doctor when they don't want to? How often should you go to the doctor? Also, how do you best communicate with schizophenics - do you tell them that the voices in their head and the evil man following them aren't real? When they insist they have telepathic powers, do I disagree and explain why it isn't so, shrug it off, or just indulge them? If they don't want to talk about it or deny they have schizophrenia, should I bring it up? How do you help those who tried to commit suicide and failed - should I ask why they did it? Is it safe to bring it up when they seem to have forgotten about the incident? Also, Dr. Torrey, at times, seemed more interested in making the book entertaining than being sensitive to this disease (such as using inappropriate punctuation marks or jumping to conclusions without explaining the factual basis). He also doesn't explain certain terms - such as insight psychotherapy (he explains why it's bad but I read the entire passage 3x but no explanation of what insight psychotherapy is). With the rave reviews, I expected more from this book. If anyone is aware of a book that addresses my questions above (and answers the question of how family members can help and better communicate with schizophrenics other than generically be "supportive", which is a given...), please let me know. I would appreciate a good recommendation.

Editorial Review:

Since its first publication in 1983, Surviving Schizophrenia has become the standard reference book on the disease and has helped thousands of patients, their families and mental health professionals. In clear language, this much–praised and important book describes the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment and course of schizophrenia and also explores living with it from both the patient and the family's point of view. This new, completely updated fifth edition includes the latest research findings on what causes the disease as well as information about the newest drugs for treatment and answers to the questions most often asked by families, consumers and providers.

Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia

Patrick Tracey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness

Lori Schiller, Amanda Bennett

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Compelling 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a unique and beautiful book. Any person with interests in Psychiatry or Mental Health issues must read it. It's the first time I experienced what a schizophrenic felt first hand. A must-read!

A must read for all adults- 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is a book that not only educates but provides the reader with a new compassion for those who deal with mental illness. Ms. Schiller presents a very complete picture of the sufferings of the mentally ill. From her writing, I gained a new perspective- including greater compassion- for those who are victims of this awful illness. I have only the highest praise for her honesty, her insight and her struggle. She is to be highly commended. A definite read.

Riveting! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book helps see into the confused world of mental illness like no other. Wonderful & hopeful!

Editorial Review:

The autobiography of a recovered schizophrenic. Lori Schiller was the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit American family who took to the New York streets dressed in rags and lapsed into a world of suicide attempts, hospitalizations, half-way houses, relapses, and constant, withering despair.

Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

Robert Whitaker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 66 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Hot on the heels of an optimistic film about Nobelist John Nash's schizophrenic journey comes medical journalist Robert Whitaker's disturbing exposé of the cruel and corrupt business of treating mental illness in America. Mad in America begins by surveying three centuries of mental health treatments to discover why positive outcomes for schizophrenics in the U.S. for the last 25 years have decreased--making them lower than those in developing countries. Whitaker asks, "Why should living in a country with such rich resources and advanced medical treatments for disorders of every kind, be so toxic to those who are severely mentally ill?"

One of Whitaker's answers draws upon the historic and current assumptions of a physical cause for schizophrenia. This resulted in cruel and unusual physical treatments--from ice-water immersion and bloodletting to the more contemporary electroshock, lobotomy, and drug therapies with dangerous side effects. This physical cause model leads to Whitaker's more provocative explanation: that mental illness has become a profit center. He offers disturbing details about how good business for drug companies makes for bad medicine in treating schizophrenia. From drug companies skewing their studies and patient/subjects kept in the dark about experiments to the cozy relationship between the American Psychiatric Association and drug companies, Whitaker underlines the mistreatment of the mentally ill. This courageous and compelling book succeeds as both a history of our attitudes toward mental illness and a manifesto for changing them. --Barbara Mackoff

Schizophrenia: Cognitive Theory, Research, and Therapy

Aaron T. Beck, Neil A. Rector, Neal Stolar, Paul Grant

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Editorial Review:

From Aaron T. Beck and colleagues, this is the definitive work on the cognitive model of schizophrenia and its treatment. The volume integrates cognitive-behavioral and biological knowledge into a state-of-the-science conceptual framework. It comprehensively examines the origins, development, and maintenance of key symptom areas: delusions, hallucinations, negative symptoms, and formal thought disorder. Treatment chapters then offer concrete guidance for addressing each type of symptom, complete with case examples and session outlines. Anyone who treats or studies serious mental illness will find a new level of understanding and the latest theoretically and empirically grounded clinical techniques.

Schizophrenia For Dummies (For Dummies (Health & Fitness))

Jerome Levine, Irene S. Levine

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Schizophrenia For Dummies 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Great book. Very informative and helped a lot to understand this disease. Also learned many coping skills.

Complete learning & impeccable reference all-in-one 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

A wealth of information that is easy to read and understand.

Love the real life perspectives that not only help the individual but also the family.

Kudos to the authors for a portraying the big picture with the right amount of details to make it sensible.

This is everything you need to know but didn't know to ask!

Editorial Review:

Practical tools for leading a happy, productive life

Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling mental disorder that afflicts one percent of the population, an estimated 2.5 million people in America alone. The firsthand advice in this reassuring guide will empower the families and caregivers of schizophrenia patients to take charge, offering expert advice on identifying the warning signs, choosing the right health professional, understanding currently available drugs and those on the horizon (as well as their side effects), and evaluating traditional and alternative therapies.

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Hearing Voices and the Borders of Sanity

Daniel B. Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Hearing Voices: A Deep, Rich and Rational Approach 5 out of 5 stars.
19 of 19 people found this review helpful.

This is a fascinating and important book about a common experience that has at different times led to inspiration, fear and sadly also misery and misunderstanding. It is estimated that at any given time about three percent of the population of the United States experiences auditory hallucinations, and over a lifetime the figure is much higher, particularly after a major stressor, such as bereavement. I say "United States" quite deliberately: there is evidence that in rural Africa and rural India visual hallucinations are more common than auditory.

As Daniel Smith says in his preface,
"It (hearing voices) occurs in cultures in al regions of the Earth and is an appropriate topic of study for an array of disciplines, including psychiatry, psychology, neurology, philosophy, anthropology, theology and linguistics."
To his list we could herbalism, pharmacology and parapsychology: there are hallucinogens that produce not only visual experiences, but also auditory and cross-modal hallucinations. And records of hearing discarnate entities have exercised parapsychologists for a century or more.

As Daniel says, he chose to be selective in his choice of material about unusual auditory experiences, and to try and tell a story. And what a story it is, running from ancient prophets to modern brain science. There are twelve chapters and the titles give you a good idea of his approach:
1. Prelude: The Pathological Assumption
2. The House of Mirrors
3. Noble Automatons
4. Interlude: Listening
5. The Tyranny of Meaning
6. The Soft-Spoken God
7. Enigmatical Dictation
8. Interlude: Floating
9. Personal Deity: Socrates Versus the State
10. Digna Vox: Joan of Arc Versus the Church
11. Morbid Offspring: Daniel Paul Schreber Versus Psychiatry
12. Postlude: Hearing Voices

Followed by Notes, quite a good Bibliography and Index.

Though he is not a specialist in the art and science of auditory hallucinations, Daniel has read widely, thought deeply and enlisted the help of some of the foremost experts in the field. He has the advantage of not only being able to think outside the box, but of throwing the box out of the window!

I sometimes sound like a broken record, insisting that hearing voices is NOT diagnostic of mental illness. Daniel makes the same point in this book, and it needs to be repeated until everyone "gets it." I have just had a discussion with some young and rather inexperienced psychiatrists who told me that if they met someone who was hearing voices, they would immediately prescribe antipsychotic medicines. There is not a shred of evidence that they should do anything of the sort unless someone is suffering or causing suffering. And even then, the "voices" should not be the focus of treatment.

Several reviewers have mentioned the work of Julian Jaynes, who postulated that auditory hallucinations were generated in the right, or non-dominant hemisphere of the brain. This book presents one of the best brief overviews of Jaynes' work that I have seen. There is an amusing little sidebar here. It is not widely known that Jaynes, like many creative innovators, had a hard time being taken seriously by other academics. He was ridiculed in some publications from the late 1970s, he was sometimes treated unkindly and people even tried to perpetrate hoaxes on him.

There is a region of the brain called the planum temporale that is the most highly lateralized part of the brain and is involved in the genesis of language and thought. Healthy right-handed volunteers usually have a large planum in the left hemisphere of the brain. In 1993 a team of people at Johns Hopkins first showed that people with schizophrenia do indeed have an equally large planum in the right hemisphere, suggesting that Jaynes was correct all along. When people hear voices, they really do: it is not something "made up." When Jaynes was called at his office at Princeton to be told about the research, he was initially suspicious that this was another hoax. Years of bad experiences had taught him to be cautious. He was thrilled when he was shown the data and that this was not some prank. The research was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1995, and has since been confirmed many times.

This tale is important for another reason: Daniel does not make the common mistake of trying to reduce the hearing of voices to a some aberrant wiring in the brain. Sometimes it may be, but usually it is not. Instead he examines not just the phenomenon, but also the experience, from multiple perspectives: historical, cultural, anthropological, artistic and more besides.

The is a rich, very well written and wise book that should be an easy read for a generalist with an interest in psychology, history and spirituality.

Highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

An inquiry into hearing voices—one of humanity’s most profound phenomena

Auditory hallucination is one of the most awe-inspiring, terrifying, and ill-understood tricks of which the human psyche is capable. In the age of modern medical science, we have relegated this experience to nothing more than a biological glitch. Yet as Daniel B. Smith puts forth in Muses, Madmen, and Prophets, some of the greatest thinkers, leaders, and prophets in history heard, listened to, and had dialogues with voices inside their heads. In a fascinating quest for understanding, Smith examines the history of this powerful phenomenon, and delivers a ringing defense of the validity of unusual human experiences.

Me, Myself, and Them: A Firsthand Account of One Young Person's Experience with Schizophrenia (Adolescent Mental Health Initiative)

Kurt Snyder, Raquel E. Gur, Linda Wasmer Andrews

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

During his second semester at college, Kurt Snyder became convinced that he was about to discover a fabulously important mathematical principle, spending hours lost in daydreams about numbers and symbols. In time, his thoughts took a darker turn, and he became preoccupied with the idea that cars were following him, or that strangers wanted to harm him. Kurt's mind had been hijacked by schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder that typically strikes during the late teen or young adult years.
In Me, Myself, and Them, Kurt, now an adult, looks back from the vantage point of recovery and eloquently describes the debilitating changes in thoughts and perceptions that took hold of his life during his teens and twenties. As a memoir, this book is remarkable for its unvarnished look at the slow and difficult process of coming back from severe mental illness. Yet Kurt's memoir is only half the story. With the help of psychiatrist Raquel E. Gur, M.D., Ph.D., and veteran science writer Linda Wasmer Andrews, Kurt paints the big picture for others affected by adolescent schizophrenia. Drawing on the latest scientific and medical evidence, he explains how to recognize warning signs, where to find help, and what treatments have proved effective. Kurt also offers practical advice on topics of particular interest to young people, such as suggestions on managing the illness at home, school, and work, and in relationships with family and friends.
Part of the Adolescent Mental Health Initiative series of books written specifically for teens and young adults, My, Myself, and Them offers hope to young people who are struggling with schizophrenia, helping them to understand and manage the challenges of this illness and go on to lead healthy lives.

Every Day Gets A Little Closer: A Twice-told Therapy

Irvin D. Yalom, Ginny Elkin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Life...Or Something Like It 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This is one of those books I couldn't wait to run back to. In those free moments between dishes and the bank, and the relaxed air of bedtime, I reveled in anticipation, because this book is like a talk with my best friend. Maybe better. Candor, humor and delightful poetic insights ramble through the hills and valleys of this therapeutic reality fest. I came away with a new sense of myself and the possibilities of my life. I will miss Dr. Yalom and Ginny. If you are looking for Mary Higgins Clark you're in the wrong place. If you're looking for a friend you don't want to let go, this is your lucky day.

Editorial Review:

The many thousands of readers of the best-selling Love’s Executioner will welcome this paperback edition of an earlier work by Dr. Irvin Yalom, written with Ginny Elkin, a pseudonymous patient whom he treated—the first book to share the dual reflections of psychiatrist and patient.Ginny Elkin was a troubled young and talented writer whom the psychiatric world had labeled as ”schizoid.” After trying a variety of therapies, she entered into private treatment with Dr. Irvin Yalom at Stanford University. As part of their work together, they agreed to write separate journals of each of their sessions. Every Day Gets a Little Closer is the product of that arrangement, in which they alternately relate their descriptions and feelings about their therapeutic relationship.