Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Consumers, and Providers (4th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: The best general book about schizophrenia
Review: This is an excellent, comprehensive book about schizophrenia that is a must read for anyone interested in the illness. Dr. Torrey is very good at writing about complex scientific subjects and this book is no exception. The book is also organized in an intuitive, straightforward manner. It will be equally useful for the afflicted, their family members, and caretakers (including doctors and therapists). Highly recommended. Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".

Rating:
Summary: The best general book about schizophrenia
Review: This is an excellent, comprehensive book about schizophrenia that is a must read for anyone interested in the illness. Dr. Torrey is very good at writing about complex scientific subjects and this book is no exception. The book is also organized in an intuitive, straightforward manner. It will be equally useful for the afflicted, their family members, and caretakers (including doctors and therapists). Highly recommended. Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Summary of the Facts of Mental Illness.
Review: This is really a great book for anyone who has had to deal with schizopphrenia or any other kind of psychosis, whether in themselves or in their family members or friends. Torrey is the ultimate guide to understanding that serious mental disorders are brain diseases and that neither the sufferer nor his/her parents deserve any blame for causing them. Biopsychiatrists are often stereotyped as right-wing, simplistic and authoritarian. Torrey is none of these. While he criticises the extreme left he falls well within the economically liberal camp as an advocate of greater government spending to assist the menatlly ill. Contrary to popular stereotype, he does not view ALL unusual behavior as the reult of a brain disease, only that which meets reasonable criteria. For instance, cultural factors must be considered. Someone who has lived all of his/her life in a Hatian cultural setting is likely to believe in voodoo because it is part of the culture. A conserevative Catholic is likely to believe that the sacramental wine transforms into blood during the Mass, etc. These things seem unusual to outsiders, but are easily explained by social and cultural factors. But what about a WASP businessman in Connecticut who all of a sudden stars behaving in an agitated manner and saying that his neighbors are using curses on him? This would be a sign of a brain dirorder, since it exists outside of a social or cultural context and also because it leads to disordered behaior where genuine religious and cultural beliefs tend to give oder and meaning to life. Another problem Torrey addresses is the issue of metaphor and figurative language. We must ascertain whether the person who says that she has butterflies in her stomach literally believes this or is simply using the common English idiom to express nervousness and tension. Thus, it is imperative that native-born American psyhiatrists be trained to understand the cultures of their immigrant and minority patients and that immigrant psychiatrists be trained to! understand the culture of the majority population so that tragic misdiagnoses do not occur. When we have reason to believe that someone has schizophrenia or some other major mental/brain disorder it is necessary to get them on the proper medication and keep them on it. Torrey has done much to de-stigmatize psychiatric medication. Why is it so bizzare or shameful that an organ in you body (in this case the brain) has some kind of chemical imbalance and that you need medication to correct it so that you can live a normal life? We don't judge asthmatics or diabetics after all. It would be impossibe to mention all of the brilliant ponts that Torrey makes in the book, so at this point, I can only reccommend that people who's lives have been touched by mental illness read it and live by its advice.

Rating:
Summary: Madness
Review: Torrey is psychiatry's Torquemada. There is no limit to the "scientific" tortures that he supports applying to unwilling to heretics labeled "schizophrenic." There are a couple of dicey problems. The people so labeled rarely believe themselves to be sick, and there is no biological test that can demonstrate that they are so. The "schizophrenics" act in ways that bother other people, and professionals like Torrey become influential and wealthy by diagnosing and "treating" them (against their will). The pseudoscience that Torrey promotes in this book has been thoroughly debunked by Thomas Szasz and others. (It was Szasz who wryly noted, "If you talk to God, you are praying, If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.") This book should actually be titled, "How to be rid of odd and unpopular people."

Rating:
Summary: Info-packed and helpfull, around the corner.
Review: While my mind was troubled, it did not search out more information about this disorder. For years I survived with old school information, now this book helped me to get a bigger picture after reading some pamphlets from the hospital. But are the facts what you need? If you need a good book to flesh out the DSM series, or need to learn anew, this book will teach. From this book in our local library to finishing all the books on this disorder, schizophrenia, has in my life been beaten back. No more voices around the corner even though my mind is still there ready to hear them.