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4.16 AVERAGE
4.16 AVERAGE
dark
informative
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
A fascinating and well constructed narrative that illustrates how little is truly none about mental illness and how little people know how to handle those with mental illness.
Wow. This book was fantastic (obviously biased being a psychology teacher). Kolker does an excellent job chronicling the lives of the Galvin family, mixed with chapters about the science and history of treatment alongside the Galvin’s experience. He also does a great job of helping keep track of the family members (there were 12 kids!) and explaining the science in a really comprehensible way. I couldn’t put this down.
challenging
informative
sad
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Boy, do I love medical narrative nonfiction, and Hidden Valley Road did not disappoint. The book's alternating chapters between the history of schizophrenia and Galvin family lore kept the following themes in constant conversation: 1) the widespread misunderstanding of and difficulty treating schizophrenia despite decades of research + 2) how the ongoing challenges of living with and alongside mental illness contribute to intergenerational trauma (and healing).
It can be hard to believe this story is real: the Galvins had twelve children? Two girls and ten boys? Six had schizophrenia?? Damn. I think the author did a respectable job of treating every member of the Galvin family holistically, eliciting empathy for the tremendous hardships they faced while also holding each person accountable for the harm they caused — not an easy thing to do.
"...all the research indicated that at least some varieties of mental illness exist on a spectrum. Some people with certain SHANK mutations may have autism, while others are bipolar, and still others have schizophrenia. The concept of a spectrum of illness seemed highly relevant to the Galvin family. Peter, for example, wandered between diagnoses, from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder. Donald also was diagnosed with mania and prescribed lithium early on, before the doctors moved on to the usual assortment of neuroleptics. Joe's collection of symptoms was different from Jim's, and Jim's was different from Matthew's, and surely there was no one else like Brian. Yet seven of the brothers — the seven who provided DeLisi with samples, including at least a few non-diagnosed brothers — all had this same mutation in a gene that also figured prominently in other mental illnesses."
"In 2010 the psychiatrist Thomas Insel, then director of NIMH, called for the research community to redefine schizophrenia as a collection of neurodevelopmental disorders, not one single disease. The end of schizophrenia as a monolithic diagnosis could mean the beginning of the end of the stigma surrounding the condition. What if schizophrenia wasn't a disease at all, but a symptom? 'The metaphor I use is that years ago, clinicians used to look at fever as one disease,' said John McGrath, an epidemiologist with Australia's Queensland Center for Mental Health Research and one of the world's authorities on quantifying populations of mentally ill people. 'Then they split it into different types of fevers. And then they realized it's just a non-specific reaction to various illnesses. Psychosis is just what the brain does when it's not working very well.'"
It can be hard to believe this story is real: the Galvins had twelve children? Two girls and ten boys? Six had schizophrenia?? Damn. I think the author did a respectable job of treating every member of the Galvin family holistically, eliciting empathy for the tremendous hardships they faced while also holding each person accountable for the harm they caused — not an easy thing to do.
"...all the research indicated that at least some varieties of mental illness exist on a spectrum. Some people with certain SHANK mutations may have autism, while others are bipolar, and still others have schizophrenia. The concept of a spectrum of illness seemed highly relevant to the Galvin family. Peter, for example, wandered between diagnoses, from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder. Donald also was diagnosed with mania and prescribed lithium early on, before the doctors moved on to the usual assortment of neuroleptics. Joe's collection of symptoms was different from Jim's, and Jim's was different from Matthew's, and surely there was no one else like Brian. Yet seven of the brothers — the seven who provided DeLisi with samples, including at least a few non-diagnosed brothers — all had this same mutation in a gene that also figured prominently in other mental illnesses."
"In 2010 the psychiatrist Thomas Insel, then director of NIMH, called for the research community to redefine schizophrenia as a collection of neurodevelopmental disorders, not one single disease. The end of schizophrenia as a monolithic diagnosis could mean the beginning of the end of the stigma surrounding the condition. What if schizophrenia wasn't a disease at all, but a symptom? 'The metaphor I use is that years ago, clinicians used to look at fever as one disease,' said John McGrath, an epidemiologist with Australia's Queensland Center for Mental Health Research and one of the world's authorities on quantifying populations of mentally ill people. 'Then they split it into different types of fevers. And then they realized it's just a non-specific reaction to various illnesses. Psychosis is just what the brain does when it's not working very well.'"
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
dark
sad
medium-paced