Escape from Psychiatry

Rating:
Summary: Inside Crazy Clover
Review: "Escape from Psychiatry," the autobiography of "Clover Smith" is a harrowing account of one woman's odyssey through the mental health care system of the '50s, '60s and '70s. This is not a book that can be evaluated as a piece of literature, because strictly speaking, it just isn't. But, like other first person accounts in the same vein - Frances Farmer's "Will There Really Be a Morning?" comes to mind - Clover's story is valuable for it's portrayal of the shocking abuses and neglect endured by the mentally ill at the hands of psychiatrists.

From her seemingly-credible perspective, she was just a young woman cut off from emotional support who put her trust in doctors to heal her simple fears. All she desired was one person with whom to talk about her feelings of isolation and terror. Instead she was scarred and scared, literally out of her wits, by a series of "treatments" which resembled torture more closely than they did rehabilitation. At the hands of doctors she spent thirty one years undergoing electroshock and neuroleptic drug therapies which left her filled with increasingly justified, internal rage and external symptoms ranging from the loss of her teeth and memory to the constant muscle spasms of tardive diskinesia - a known neurotoxic side-effect from the brain damage caused by a range of neuroleptic drugs.

She never did find a psychiatrist who wanted to talk with her, with the exception of one scurrilous egotist who also tried to bed her. Yet some preternatural strength, resident inside Clover, allowed her to outlast the convoluted mental health care system. Her recovery finally came as a result of entering an Alcoholics Anonymous program and weaning herself from the medications she instinctively knew to be toxic. She is no longer schizophrenic or paranoid, two diagnoses that may never have been accurate for her or countless others who have undergone similar treatment.

Rating:
Summary: Inside Crazy Clover
Review: "Escape from Psychiatry," the autobiography of "Clover Smith" is a harrowing account of one woman's odyssey through the mental health care system of the `50s, '60s and `70s. This is not a book that can be evaluated as a piece of literature, because strictly speaking, it just isn't. But, like other first person accounts in the same vein - Frances Farmer's "Will There Really Be a Morning?" comes to mind - Clover's story is valuable for it's portrayal of the shocking abuses and neglect endured by the mentally ill at the hands of psychiatrists.

From her seemingly-credible perspective, she was just a young woman cut off from emotional support who put her trust in doctors to heal her simple fears. All she desired was one person with whom to talk about her feelings of isolation and terror. Instead she was scarred and scared, literally out of her wits, by a series of "treatments" which resembled torture more closely than they did rehabilitation. At the hands of doctors she spent thirty one years undergoing electroshock and neuroleptic drug therapies which left her filled with increasingly justified, internal rage and external symptoms ranging from the loss of her teeth and memory to the constant muscle spasms of tardive diskinesia - a known neurotoxic side-effect from the brain damage caused by a range of neuroleptic drugs.

She never did find a psychiatrist who wanted to talk with her, with the exception of one scurrilous egotist who also tried to bed her. Yet some preternatural strength, resident inside Clover, allowed her to outlast the convoluted mental health care system. Her recovery finally came as a result of entering an Alcoholics Anonymous program and weaning herself from the medications she instinctively knew to be toxic. She is no longer schizophrenic or paranoid, two diagnoses that may never have been accurate for her or countless others who have undergone similar treatment.

Rating:
Summary: A profoundly moving and heroic true story!
Review: "Escape from Psychiatry" is an amazing story that made me shake my head in disbelief. Horror is perpetually disguised as "treatment" in the psychiatric community. Every time this woman turns to get help, she is again victimized by the authoritarian regime called psychiatry. Yet, through an incredible strength of character, she finds help through a group of people outside of psychiatry that use the powerful tools of love, hope and self-responsibility.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Heart felt, thought provoking, self-disclosure.
Review: Clover's story brings to light the travesty of presenting "mental illness" as irreversible and explodes the myth that medications can silence the symptoms. It also raises significant questions concerning accepted methods of 'treatment' that require the ultimate isolation of mental health patients making visitation (and monitoring) of the standard of care difficult, if not altogether impossible, to monitor. Her expose presents the inside story on mental health institutions, raising many questions and illuminating an area of medical care that seems to have been allowed to operate in obscurity for too long.

Rating:
Summary: Psychiatry Hinders More Than It Helps
Review: ESCAPE FROM PSYCHIATRY is a very powerful story! I am awed by Clover's strength and courage in being able to recall and relive all of her experiences of psychiatric abuse in order to write about what she went through. Her story is very important because it shows how the core of so-called "schizophrenia" often traces back to feeling desperate for love and yet very afraid of it. Mostly, however, her story documents how the pessimistic expectations that psychiatrists have for people who are extreme mental cases can become self-fulfilling prophecies for people who remain trapped as "patients" in the "mental health" system. When Clover found different people who gave her kindness, love, and hope, she recovered and healed. This is the kind of story that most psychiatrists can't stand hearing about because it shows how they contribute to the very conditions they claim they are trying to cure, and it shows that their beliefs about "chronic mental cases" can be totally wrong.

Al Siebert, Ph.D Host of the "Successful Schizophrenia" web site. Executive Director of the Kenneth Donaldson Archive for the Autobiographies of Psychiatric Survivors

Rating:
Summary: I know this woman and she is the real thing.
Review: I have had the pleasure of meeting Clover and was able to spend some time getting to know her and though the book is great in person she is truly amazing. Having studied psychiatry and the effects of long term treatment I can tell you that hardly anyone makes it out and is able to function on their own. Clover has done that and was able to write and self publish her story all with the intent to help others. This book is great, it is truly a testament to one woman's strength and love for all. I would encourage you to also contact her through the info. given and support her cause, she is a real hero and a wonderful woman.