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"Mentally ill Biography"
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Loud in the house of myself : memoir of a strange girl
Stacy Pershall grew up depressed and too smart for her own good, a deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas (population 1,000), where the prevailing wisdom was that Jesus healed all. From her days as a thirteen-year-old Jesus freak, through a battle with anorexia and bulimia, her first manic episode at eighteen, and the eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited and at times mordantly funny memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell-several breakdowns and suicide attempts and her struggle with the mental health care system.
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The Rapids
'TheRapids is beautifullywritten: brimming with humour, empathy, pathos and heart. This book is an earnest,generous, and important contribution to ongoing global dialogue around mentalhealth .' - Maxine Beneba Clarke.
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While you were out : an intimate family portrait of mental illness in an era of silence
\"From award-winning journalist Meg Kissinger, a searing memoir of a family besieged by mental illness, as well as an incisive exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them. Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger's family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard. But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding. A heavily-medicated mother hospitalized for anxiety and depression, a manic father prone to violence, and children in the throes of bipolar disorder and depression, two of whom would take their own lives. Through it all, the Kissingers faced the world with their signature dark humor and the unspoken family rule-never talk about it. While You Were Out begins as the personal story of one family's struggles, then opens outward as Kissinger details how childhood tragedy catalyzed a journalism career focused on exposing our country's flawed mental health care. Combining the intimacy of memoir with the rigor of investigative reporting, the book explores the consequences of shame, the havoc of botched public policy, and the hope offered by new treatment strategies. This is a story of one family's love and devotion in the face of relentless struggle. It is a book for anyone who cares about someone with mental illness. In other words, it is a book for everyone\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Inside the Mental
Before she became a psychiatric nurse at 'The Mental' in the 1950s, Kay Parley was a patient there, as were the father she barely remembered and the grandfather she'd never met. Part memoir, part history, 'Inside The Mental' offers an episodic journey into the stigma, horror, and redemption that she found within the institution's walls. Now in her 90's, she looks back at the emerging use of group therapy, the advent of patient rights, evolving ethics in psychiatry, and the amazing cast of characters she met there. She also reveals her role in groundbreaking experiments with LSD, pioneered by the world's leading researchers to treat addiction and mental illness.
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Thirty Rooms to Hide In
Author Luke Longstreet Sullivan has a simple way of describing his new memoir: \"It's likeThe Shining. . . only funnier.\" And as this astonishing account reveals, the comment is accurate.Thirty Rooms to Hide
Intells the story of Sullivan's father and his descent from being one of the world's top orthopedic surgeons at the Mayo Clinic to a man who is increasingly abusive, alcoholic, and insane, ultimately dying alone on the floor of a Georgia motel. For his wife and six sons, the years prior to his death were years of turmoil, anger, and family dysfunction; but somehow, they were also a time of real happiness for Sullivan and his five brothers, full of dark humor and much laughter.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, the six brothers had a wildly fun and thoroughly dysfunctional childhood living in a forbidding thirty-room mansion, known as the Millstone, on the outskirts of Rochester, Minnesota. The many rooms of the immense home, as well as their mother's loving protection, allowed the Sullivan brothers to grow up as normal, mischievous boys. Against a backdrop of the times-the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, fallout shelters, JFK's assassination, and the Beatles-the cracks in their home life and their father's psyche continue to widen. When their mother decides to leave the Millstone and move the family across town, the Sullivan boys are able to find solace in each other and in rock 'n' roll.
AsThirty Rooms to Hide
Infollows the story of the Sullivan family-at times grim, at others poignant-there is a wonderful, dark humor that lifts the narrative. Tragic, funny, and powerfully evocative of the 1950s and 1960s,Thirty Rooms to Hide Inis a tale of public success and private dysfunction, personal and familial resilience, and the strange power of humor to give refuge when it is needed most, even if it can't always provide the answers.
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That's mental : painfully funny things that drive me crazy about being mentally ill
\"Award-winning Asian British comedy writer Amanda Rosenberg presents an intimate memoir of confessional essays about the hilarious, inappropriate, and often difficult side to being mental\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Elizabeth Packard
Elizabeth Packard's story is one of courage and accomplishment in the face of injustice and heartbreak. In 1860, her husband, a strong-willed Calvinist minister, committed her to an Illinois insane asylum in an effort to protect their six children and his church from what he considered her heretical religious ideas. _x000B__x000B_Upon her release three years later (as her husband sought to return her to an asylum), Packard obtained a jury trial and was declared sane. Before the trial ended, however, her husband sold their home and left for Massachusetts with their young children and her personal property. His actions were perfectly legal under Illinois and Massachusetts law; Packard had no legal recourse by which to recover her children and property. _x000B__x000B_This experience in the legal system, along with her experience as an asylum patient, launched Packard into a career as an advocate for the civil rights of married women and the mentally ill. She wrote numerous books and lobbied legislatures literally from coast to coast advocating more stringent commitment laws, protections for the rights of asylum patients, and laws to give married women equal rights in matters of child custody, property, and earnings. Despite strong opposition from the psychiatric community, Packard's laws were passed in state after state, with lasting impact on commitment and care of the mentally ill in the United States._x000B__x000B_Packard's life demonstrates how dissonant streams of American social and intellectual history led to conflict between the freethinking Packard, her Calvinist husband, her asylum doctor, and America's fledgling psychiatric profession. It is this conflict--along with her personal battle to transcend the stigma of insanity and regain custody of her children--that makes Elizabeth Packard's story both forceful and compelling.
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Am I Sane Yet?
Award-winning journalist John Scully has been committed to mental institutions seven times. He has been locked up. He has attempted suicide. Am I Sane Yet? is essential reading for anyone interested in depression and mental illness. John Scully is getting better.
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