Stalking Irish Madness

Stalking Irish Madness
Author: Patrick Tracey
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2008-08-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0553905597

In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story, Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and solve the mystery of his Irish-American family's multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia. For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an occasion to revisit their family's roots. But for Patrick Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to confront the genealogical mystery of schizophrenia–a disease that had claimed a great-great-great-grandmother, a grandmother, an uncle, and, most recently, two sisters. As long as Tracey could remember, schizophrenia ran on his mother's side, seldom spoken of outright but impossible to ignore. Devastated by the emotional toll the disease had already taken on his family, terrified of passing it on to any children he might have, and inspired by the recent discovery of the first genetic link to schizophrenia, Tracey followed his genealogical trail from Boston to Ireland's county Roscommon, home of his oldest-known schizophrenic ancestor. In a renovated camper, Tracey crossed the Emerald Isle to investigate the country that, until the 1960s, had the world's highest rate of institutionalization for mental illness, following clues and separating fact from fiction in the legendary relationship the Irish have had with madness. Tracey's path leads from fairy mounds and ancient caverns still shrouded in superstition to old pubs whose colorful inhabitants are a treasure trove of local lore. He visits the massive and grim asylum where his famine starved ancestors may have lived. And he interviews the Irish research team that first cracked the schizophrenic code to learn how much–and how little–we know about this often misunderstood disease. Filled with history, science, and lore, Stalking Irish Madness is an unforgettable chronicle of one man's attempt to make sense of his family's past and to find hope for the future of schizophrenic patients. From the Hardcover edition.

Beyond Schizophrenia

Beyond Schizophrenia
Author: Susan Frances Dunham
Publisher: Loving Healing Press
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2010-01-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1615990356

What would you do if your child suffered with something so severe it affected every aspect of his life? Susie Dunham, Midwestern mom and former nurse, never suspected her son Michaelwas anything but a typical college student with big dreams until he developed schizophreniashortly after his 21st birthday. The Dunham family quickly becomes immersedin the nightmare world of mental illness in America: psychiatric wards, a seemingly indifferentnursing staff, and the trial-and-error world of psychotropic meds. Michael's ultimaterecovery and remission comes with plenty of traumatic incidents involving bothignorance and stigma, but his courage and quest for dignity will inspire all readers. "Susie Dunham's heroic, heart-rending story is a beacon of light in the darkness of insanity.It shows that recovery is hard-won but possible for people who develop schizophrenia, despite a media that sensationalizes them, a society that shuns them, and adysfunctional mental healthcare system that fails them miserably." --Patrick Tracey, author of "Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia" "Every person in a leadership position needs to take the time to read this moving storyof triumph over adversity." --State Representative John Adams, Ohio House Minority Whip "The fact that Michael bravely fought this disease, picked up the pieces and moved beyondit, should give others hope that one day schizophrenia will be seen as a treatable diseasewith no stigma attached." --Sharon Goldberg, News & Reviews Editor,"NYC Voices" A Journal for Mental Health Advocacy ""Beyond Schizophrenia: Michael's Journey" is a book that I couldn't put down. Thestory of Michael's parents Susie and Mark who support their son both in good times andbad really touched me. I really like the way the symptoms of schizophrenia are explainedclearly." --Bill MacPhee, Founder/CEO of SZ Magazine Learn more at www.SusieDunham.org From the Reflections of America Series at Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com PSY022050 Psychology: Psychopathology - Schizophrenia BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs MED105000 Medical / Psychiatry / General

Indulgence in Death

Indulgence in Death
Author: J. D. Robb
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2010-11-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101445017

NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas must discover who’s preying on those who cater to the rich and famous in this thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling In Death series. When a murder disrupts the Irish vacation she is taking with her husband, Roarke, Eve realizes that no place is safe—not an Irish wood or the streets of the manic city she calls home. But nothing prepares her for what she discovers upon her return to the cop shop in New York... A limo driver is shot through the neck with a crossbow. Then a high-priced escort is found stabbed through the heart with a bayonet. Eve begins to fear that she has come across that most dangerous of criminal, a thrill-killer, but one with a taste for the finer things in life—and death. As time runs out on another innocent victim’s life, Eve’s investigation will take her into the rarified circle that her husband Roarke travels in—and into the perverted heart of madness...

From Madness to Mental Health

From Madness to Mental Health
Author: Greg Eghigian
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2009-12-10
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0813549094

From Madness to Mental Health neither glorifies nor denigrates the contributions of psychiatry, clinical psychology, and psychotherapy, but rather considers how mental disorders have historically challenged the ways in which human beings have understood and valued their bodies, minds, and souls. Greg Eghigian has compiled a unique anthology of readings, from ancient times to the present, that includes Hippocrates; Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, penned in the 1390s; Dorothea Dix; Aaron T. Beck; Carl Rogers; and others, culled from religious texts, clinical case studies, memoirs, academic lectures, hospital and government records, legal and medical treatises, and art collections. Incorporating historical experiences of medical practitioners and those deemed mentally ill, From Madness to Mental Health also includes an updated bibliography of first-person narratives on mental illness compiled by Gail A. Hornstein.

Maeve Brennan

Maeve Brennan
Author: Edward O’Rourke
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2024-10-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040216897

This book explores the intricate interplay between physical spaces and psychological landscapes in the works of Irish-American author Maeve Brennan. Brennan’s writing is now classed amongst the most important of twentieth-century Irish women’s fiction, having undergone a significant reclamation and reappraisal in the 30 years since her death. Single and childfree for most of her life, Brennan eschewed the securities of family and home, experiencing an "otherness" that she shared with her fellow New Yorkers, many of them left, she wrote, hanging on to a city half-capsized––“most of them still able to laugh as they cling to the island that is their life’s predicament.” It is a suitably ambiguous expression for a writer who cultivated an interstitial existence, whose stories inhere within a dream cycle of reiterative pasts, and whose works augment and elevate the canon of radical Irish fiction.

The Patient

The Patient
Author: Jasper DeWitt
Publisher: William Morrow
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2020
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0358181763

The Silent Patient by way of Stephen King: Parker, a young, overconfident psychiatrist new to his job at a mental asylum, miscalculates catastrophically when he undertakes curing a mysterious and profoundly dangerous patient. In a series of online posts, Parker H., a young psychiatrist, chronicles the harrowing account of his time working at a dreary mental hospital in New England. Through this internet message board, Parker hopes to communicate with the world his effort to cure one bewildering patient. We learn, as Parker did on his first day at the hospital, of the facility's most difficult, profoundly dangerous case--a forty-year-old man who was originally admitted to the hospital at age six. This patient has no known diagnosis. His symptoms seem to evolve over time. Every person who has attempted to treat him has been driven to madness or suicide. Desperate and fearful, the hospital's directors keep him strictly confined and allow minimal contact with staff for their own safety, convinced that releasing him would unleash catastrophe on the outside world. Parker, brilliant and overconfident, takes it upon himself to discover what ails this mystery patient and finally cure him. But from his first encounter with the mystery patient, things spiral out of control, and, facing a possibility beyond his wildest imaginings, Parker is forced to question everything he thought he knew. Fans of Sarah Pinborough's Behind Her Eyes and Paul Tremblay's The Cabin at the End of the World will be riveted by Jasper DeWitt's astonishing debut.

After Schizophrenia

After Schizophrenia
Author: Margaret Hawkins
Publisher: Conari Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781573245357

Schizophrenia affects more than 3 million American adults. Despite being classified as a severe mental illness, a brain disease that can be treated, it remains misunderstood. Schizophrenia still carries a stigma that too often devastates and silences families. For 30 years, Margaret Hawkins' sister Barb lived cloistered in her family home in suburban Chicago, a prisoner of undiagnosed schizophrenia. Hearing voices and paralyzed with fear, she was never evaluated, never treated, and refused to leave the house. After Schizophrenia is the story of Barb's descent into severe mental illness and the healing that has come only in recent years: after her parents' death when Margaret became her guardian. With uncanny grace and humor, Margaret chronicles her family's struggle with Barb's mental illness, the love that carried them through, and the virtual army of healthcare angels willing to come to Barb's aid. This is an extraordinary story of severe mental illness and the healing that is possible with prompt diagnosis, good drugs, good care, and a fierce belief in the power to get well.

Like Crazy

Like Crazy
Author: Dan Mathews
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1501199994

A hilarious and heartbreaking memoir about a mother and son's outlandish odyssey of self-discovery.

The Whitsun Daughters

The Whitsun Daughters
Author: Carrie Mesrobian
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-08-24
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0735231974

"The ghost of a 19th century Irish immigrant to Minnesota watches over three contemporary American teenagers who live on the plot of land she did as they try to terminate an unwanted pregnancy"--

The Story Within

The Story Within
Author: Amy Boesky
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2013-10-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1421410974

“A compelling collection of essays that address the experiences of many who have genetically based illnesses.” —Library Journal The contributors to The Story Within share powerful experiences of living with genetic disorders. Their stories illustrate the complexities involved in making decisions about genetic diseases: whether to be tested, who to tell, whether to have children, and whether and how to treat children medically, if treatment is available. More broadly, they consider how genetic information shapes the ways we see ourselves, the world, and our actions within it. People affected by genetic disease respond to such choices in varied ways. These writers reflect that breadth of response, yet they share the desire to challenge a restricted sense of what “health” is or whose life has value. They write hoping to expand conversations about genetics and identity—to deepen debate and generate questions. They or their families are affected by Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, genetic deafness or blindness, schizophrenia, cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, fragile X, or Fanconi anemia. All of their stories remind us that genetic health is complicated, dynamic, and above all, deeply personal. Contributors include: Misha Angrist, Amy Boesky, Kelly Cupo, Michael Downing, Clare Dunsford, Mara Faulkner, Christine Kehl O’Hagan, Charlie Pierce, Kate Preskenis, Emily Rapp, Jennifer Rosner, Joanna Rudnick, Anabel Stenzel, Isabel Stenzel Byrnes, Laurie Strongin, Patrick Tracey, Alice Wexler