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A review by bookish_emily
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
4.0
This book is part family memoir/biography and part history of schizophrenia treatment and research. The Galvan family included 12 children, six of whom developed schizophrenia. This tragedy ultimately created a perfect sample for the study of schizophrenia’s potential genetic roots and played a key role in the nature vs nurture debate for this disease.
I enjoyed this book but thought it could have been shorter. It was somewhat fragmented and repetitive at times. It was interesting to learn more about how schizophrenia has been researched over time, and heartbreaking to learn about how difficult life was for all of the Galvans. It provides a more nuanced and realistic view of schizophrenia than most mainstream media, which makes it seem way more prevalent and dangerous than it actually is. Schizophrenia is actually a very rare disease compared to other types of mental illness.
If you like memoir-type books or want to learn more about schizophrenia, then you will probably like Hidden Valley Road.
I enjoyed this book but thought it could have been shorter. It was somewhat fragmented and repetitive at times. It was interesting to learn more about how schizophrenia has been researched over time, and heartbreaking to learn about how difficult life was for all of the Galvans. It provides a more nuanced and realistic view of schizophrenia than most mainstream media, which makes it seem way more prevalent and dangerous than it actually is. Schizophrenia is actually a very rare disease compared to other types of mental illness.
If you like memoir-type books or want to learn more about schizophrenia, then you will probably like Hidden Valley Road.