Please submit the title of any books that you have found useful for young people and others who have a mentally ill parent, to be added to the list below.
Submit to Contact page.
You must specify the following subject line: NN Book Review
In the submission include:
(Authors may also submit details. Please feel free to include a copy of your publication to NNAAMI Book Review P.O. Box 213 Glen Iris 3146 Victoria Australia. Also include a copy of an extract with permission to place on NNAAMI web site. NNAAMI reserves the right to add or remove reviews with out notice)
Suzanne Gold is the author of "Daddy's Girls," a bittersweet novel of a family on the verge of mental illness, struggling to love one another. "The best book I've read since 'The Hours' by Michael Cunningham" (Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 2000) --Terry Mathews, BookBrowser.com, Midwest Book Review
Read Chapter One free at http://www.suzannegold.com.
Reviewer: Thelma I. Hayes was founding President of National Alliance for the Mentally Ill ( NAMI), North Coastal San Diego County, California. She now serves as advocacy chair.
In the Shadow of Madness, A Memoir by Dolores Brandon, has a literary quality rare in books and articles written about mental illness C depression, bipolar or manic depressive illness, schizophrenia, panic disorder, among them.
Those of us involved with an afflicted friend or relative eagerly wade through academic articles about the latest research, always looking for a breakthrough to relieve a patient's and a family's trials. Or we read, with the hope of gaining help, a case study of a person whose illness resembles whichever neurological brain disease our kin has.
Seldom are we treated to the type of writing Dolores Brandon produced as she relates her Canadian family's coping and surviving her father's manic depressive illness.
Download Review 1 and Review 2.By Virginia Holman, Published by Simon & Schuster, March 6, 2003.
"Rescuing Patty Hearst [is an] unforgettable memoir. . . . Holman's gutsy prose bespeaks her survivor's backbone and hindsight." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Readers will find themselves releasing their breath only at the end of the short, remarkably taut chapters. No wonder the portion published last year in DoubleTake won a Pushcart Prize." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Virginia Holman's mother suffers from schizophrenia. Her mind is not beautiful.
It was 1975, one year after the Patty Hearst kidnapping fiasco and the Watergate scandal,
when Holman's mother experienced her first psychotic episode. She spirited Holman and her
young sister to a family cottage in a remote location on the Virginia Peninsula.
Download the full Review.
Margaret J. Brown has written a book (2000) called Growing up with a schizophrenic mother based on a number of interviews with people who fit this description. The book is a tough read because the interviews are unflinching and the people interviewed are honest and upfront about their experiences. It's well-written and very informative and paints an unforgettable picture of what it can be like to grow up with very crazy, mostly untreated, mothers. This book hasn't gotten the press it deserves but it's a gem.
Susan Nathiel Ph.D. US
by Michelle Cann.
You may have been watching a loved one struggling with mental illness. If you have ever wondered what they were actually thinking, and how they were really feeling, this book might give you some insight. Published in October of 2005, the book details my experience with the sudden onset of mental illness and my subsequent diagnoses of first paranoid schizophrenia, and later bipolar disorder. It is a brutally honest account of my first two episodes, and it recites in detail my initial slow insidious decline into paranoia and my later unexpected manifestation of symptoms and creativity of thought that arose during the second episode. My intention is to seek to reduce some of the stigma that currently still surrounds mental illness which causes so many to keep their diagnoses a secret.
The title of the book is "Depressed Paranoid Schizophrenic Maniac - A Sane Person's Experience with Mental Illness" by Michelle Cann. It is available from Trafford Publishing for $15.50 each. You may call toll-free 1 888 232 4444 (Canada and USA only) or 250 383 6864 or order online at www.trafford.com or orders@trafford.com
I would be extremely grateful if you would pass this information along to your members. Thank you very much.
Kind regards,
Michelle Cann
Bermuda
by Tina Kotulski
Due for release late spring 06 to early summer USA.
Endorsements already for the book entitled 'Saving Millie' by Tina Kotulski
"Tina Kotulski's SAVING MILLIE is a compelling journey into the special world mothers and daughters inhabit--a remarkable tale of madness, survival, and devotion. It is a searing portrait of family life that is as heart breaking as it is heart warming."
Jay Neugeboren, author of IMAGINING ROBERT, Transforming MADNESS, et al
Tina Kotulski has transformed tragedy and frustration into triumph and healing. This book is a very welcome addition to the resources available to families dealing with schizophrenia and a broken health care system. It is an opportunity to learn and gain support from somone who has been there. More important, it gives hope and by example, guidance to others who are dealing with seriously mentally ill loved ones who do not belive they are ill. I highly reccomend it.
Dr. Xavier Amador P.H. D
Further info http://www.extraordinaryvoices.com