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Losing Dad, Paranoid Schizophrenia

Author: Amanda LaPera

Publisher:

Published: 2024-01-24

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780986247132

No drugs. No alcohol. So, how does a fifty-three-year-old develop schizophrenia? That's the question puzzling Joseph's family when his mind descends into madness, filled with grandiose delusions and paranoia. He traverses several continents as a self-proclaimed prophet of God. Then he disappears.His wife and three kids race to find answers before he slips away forever. Their biggest fear-he will die a faceless stranger on the streets. Alone. Winner of a Benjamin Franklin Silver Award in the category of psychology, Losing Dad, Paranoid Schizophrenia: A Family's Search for Hope is a compelling true story told through multiple perspectives-the children, spouse, and patient; it offers a rare glimpse into a world that will either feel hauntingly familiar or shocking. The Foreword written by Xavier Amador, Ph.D., Founder, LEAP Institute, Author, I am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help! (Vida Press 2012) explains the neurological condition of anosognosia; provided supplemental materials include a list of resources; discussion of mental health laws; exclusive author and family member interviews; as well as reading guide questions useful for book clubs, classroom discussion, case study, or professional education for those in medical, mental health, law enforcement, political, and legal fields to better understand the societal and psychological impacts of mental illness, both as experienced by family caregivers and the community. Ideal for Advanced Topics in Psychopathology books portraying lived experiences. Severe mental illness affects one in seventeen and can develop inside any mind at any time. It impacts the entire family.

Losing Dad

Author: Amanda LaPera

Publisher:

Published: 2013-09-01

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780989703734

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"Losing Dad, Paranoid Schizophrenia: a Family's Search for Hope," is the compelling true story of a family grappling with the stranglehold of severe mental illness. The ordeal began innocently enough. "Joseph" was happily raising a middle class family in the California suburbs when he was diagnosed with cancer. The operation was successful and prognosis good until a routine follow-up procedure was botched. Doctors corrected the issue and sent "Joseph" home from the hospital, but he was never the same again. At age 53, Joseph suddenly became prone to fits of rage and hallucinations. His new and disturbing religious obsessions and proselytizing alienated his grown children and got him fired from his job, while his wife began to fear for her life. Depression, anxiety, and paranoia overtook this once-vibrant man. Frequent hospital stints and a persistent refusal to stay on medication ultimately led him to flee his home and travel the world homeless as a self-proclaimed religious prophet, eschewing wealth, belongings and family. Joseph's colorful descent into psychosis featured a journey that stretched across thirty countries, four continents, and thirteen wives. He faced down drug dealers and prostitutes, advised the Italian Mafioso and was hailed as a prophet in Africa. Losing Dad not only features Joseph's harrowing -- and still ongoing -- flight from reality amidst anosognosia, but also valuable information about severe mental illness, a crippling disease that affects 1 in 17 people and can develop inside any mind at any time. It provides a list of resources, a discussion of current mental health laws, and plenty of food for thought. The Foreword is written by Dr. Xavier Amador. "I highly recommend 'Losing Dad' both as an educational tool and as a heartfelt tale. Beautifully woven between the facts are the feelings. [Amanda LaPera] shows that behind every severe mental illness there is a human being." -- Xavier Amador, Ph.D., Founder, LEAP Institute Author, I am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help! (Vida Press 2012) A portion of proceeds from sales of Losing Dad will go to NAMI-OC, an affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a nonprofit dedicated to improving lives of individuals and families affected by mental illness.

Schizophrenia - Who Cares?

Author: Tim Salmon

Publisher:

Published: 2015-05

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9780993307027

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Tim Salmon dedicates this frank, no-holds-barred account to all those who find themselves in the same boat, both sufferers and relatives, all of whom, once this bizarre illness strikes, find themselves thrown into a chaotic situation that is always bewildering and often as downright terrifying as it is heartbreaking. His story includes his dealings with the mental health care services, "a pretty shameful record of incompetence, buck-passing and lack of communication and co-ordination" and the mental health charities, whom he has not spared - "for in their devotion to the sloppy, evasive language of political correctness, they have dangerously underplayed the seriousness of real mental illness like schizophrenia.""Only a brilliant writer can make a page-turner out of a grim subject like schizophrenia. Totally gripping, I couldn't stop reading until the end." US readerA mental illness memoir that is also: "A riveting read, a proper page-turner. Reduced me, on occasion, to both tears and laughter. We could do better than this." Nina Bawden, novelist, author of The Birds on the Trees."I would recommend this book for care coordinators and those interested in more responsive and engaged services." Leonard Fagin Honorary Senior Lecturer, University College London, and Consultant Psychiatrist, The Psychiatrist"The writing of this stark, tragic story is possibly the most moving non-fiction I have ever read, and a piercing look into darkest shadows not often explored with such intense scrutiny and love. I couldn't stop reading." US Reader"A thought-provoking and brutally honest personal account of a father's struggle through the development of his son, Jeremy's, paranoid schizophrenia... I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it very difficult to put down." Declan Hyland, Royal College of Psychiatry Student Associate Newsletter"Impressive, moving, disturbing." Salley Vickers, author of Miss Garnet's Angel, The Other Side of You, The Cleaner of Chartres

My Father's Keeper

Author: Julie Gregory

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0007268807

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As a child Julie was close to her father. More friend than parent, he would belt her into their tiny car and they'd punch through yellow lights, scarf down candy bars before supper and had their own way of making fun of Julie's mother in a secret language of eye-rolling. She adored her father for his exuberance, and pitied him when he broke down in suicidal desperation. But as she neared 10, a darker side emerged... This is a powerful and compelling memoir of growing up with a schizophrenic father.

I Am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help!

Author: Xavier Francisco Amador

Publisher: Vida Publishers

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13:

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No One Cares About Crazy People

Author: Ron Powers

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2017-03-21

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 031634110X

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New York Times-bestselling author Ron Powers offers a searching, richly researched narrative of the social history of mental illness in America paired with the deeply personal story of his two sons' battles with schizophrenia. From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the infamous eugenics era to the follies of the anti-psychiatry movement to the current landscape in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted love ones, Powers limns our fears and myths about mental illness and the fractured public policies that have resulted. Braided with that history is the moving story of Powers's beloved son Kevin -- spirited, endearing, and gifted -- who triumphed even while suffering from schizophrenia until finally he did not, and the story of his courageous surviving son Dean, who is also schizophrenic. A blend of history, biography, memoir, and current affairs ending with a consideration of where we might go from here, this is a thought-provoking look at a dreaded illness that has long been misunderstood. "Extraordinary and courageous . . . No doubt if everyone were to read this book, the world would change." -- New York Times Book Review

The Edge of Every Day

Author: Marin Sardy

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0525434321

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Against the starkly beautiful backdrop of Anchorage, Alaska, where she grew up, Marin Sardy weaves an extraordinarily affecting, fiercely intelligent account of the shapeless thief—the schizophrenia—that kept her mother immersed in a world of private delusion and later also manifested in her brother, ultimately claiming his life. Composed of exquisite, self-contained chapters that take us through three generations of this adventurous, artistic, and often haunted family, The Edge of Every Day draws in topics from neuroscience and evolution to the mythology and art rock to shape its brilliant inquiry into how the mind works. In the process, Sardy casts new light on the treatment of the mentally ill in our society. Through it all runs her blazing compassion and relentless curiosity, as her meditations takes us to the very edge of love and loss—and signal the arrival of an important new literary voice.

Crazy

Author: Pete Earley

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2007-04-03

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780425213896

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“A magnificent gift to those of us who love someone who has a mental illness…Earley has used his considerable skills to meticulously research why the mental health system is so profoundly broken.”—Bebe Moore Campbell, author of 72 Hour Hold Former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley had written extensively about the criminal justice system. But it was only when his own son—in the throes of a manic episode—broke into a neighbor's house that he learned what happens to mentally ill people who break a law. This is the Earley family's compelling story, a troubling look at bureaucratic apathy and the countless thousands who suffer confinement instead of care, brutal conditions instead of treatment, in the “revolving doors” between hospital and jail. With mass deinstitutionalization, large numbers of state mental patients are homeless or in jail-an experience little better than the horrors of a century ago. Earley takes us directly into that experience—and into that of a father and award-winning journalist trying to fight for a better way.

Mad House

Author: Clea Simon

Publisher: Doubleday Books

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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When the "Boston Globe first published Clea Simon's cover story on growing up with her two schizophrenic siblings, the response was overwhelming. "Healthy" siblings constitute that silent majority of people who have grown up in dysfunctional families and, largely due to their age have often stood on the sidelines as the tragic consequences of a mental disorder claimed either the health or life of a brother or sister. For Clea Simon, the experience was shattering as first her beloved, older brother Daniel, the brilliant Harvard freshman started hearing voices and dropping out of school when his schizophrenia made functioning impossible. And then again as the same illness claimed her sister Althea, who has bounced around from one state institution to another after her parents eventually gave up on helping the daughter who refused their help. The issues "well" siblings face run the gamut from guilt (why do I deserve to be OK?), fear (what are the chances that I have this disease, or that my children may inherit it?), to the burden of caring for a sibling (am I my brother's keeper?), and overcompensating in the family, or its converse, acting destructively to get attention. In talking to hundreds of other siblings and experts in the field, Simon has written a comprehensive book that combines the best of memoir writing with the kind of practical advice that should ease the pain of any brother or sister who has felt helpless in the face of a sibling's mental illness.

The Outsider

Author: Nathaniel Lachenmeyer

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2001-08-14

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0767901916

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An unsentimental yet profoundly moving look at one family’s experience with mental illness. “A haunting, poignant story of a son’s life with, and without, his father. A rare and moving portrait of one of life’s major struggles—the devastation created by severe mental illness.” —John Oldham, M.D., Director of New York State Psychiatric Institute In 1978, Charles Lachenmeyer was a happily married professor of sociology who lived in the New York suburbs with his wife and nine-year-old son, Nathaniel. But within a few short years, schizophrenia—a devastating mental illness with no known cure—would cost him everything: his sanity, his career, his family, even the roof over his head. Upon learning of his father’s death in 1995, Nathaniel set out to search for the truth behind his father’s haunted, solitary existence. Rich in imagery and poignant symbolism, The Outsider is a beautifully written memoir of a father’s struggle to survive with dignity, and a son’s struggle to know the father he lost to schizophrenia long before he finally lost him to death. • Recipient of the Kenneth Johnson Memorial Research Library Book Award • Winner of the 2000 Bell of Hope Award