Product Description
Lies In Silence advocates for improved diagnosis and treatment for bipolar and co-occurring disorders by describing the devastating toll the disorders took on three generations of the author’s family. An insightful and c… More >>
Lies in Silence: Lessons about Bipolar and Co-Occurring Disorders Learned Through Advocating for Appropriate Treatment for My Family
Written by admin on August 23rd, 2010 in Parenting & Families.
Tags: About, Advocating, Appropriate, Bipolar, CoOccurring, Disorders, Family, Learned, Lessons, Lies, Silence, Through, Treatment
What I appreciated about this book, in particular, is the author’s firsthand experience with mental illness from so many angles: a clinician, a daughter, a mother, and her own personal experiences. Hart writes with unusual candor of her professional experience supporting those with mental illness, then tending to her own family as mental illness unfolds, and then taking care of herself as her own mental illness symptoms come to the fore after a medication reaction. In my efforts to understand mental illness, this author’s clarity of description offered me insights I’ve not found elsewhere. She has a remarkable ability to allow the reader to peek into the perspective of mental illness, suicide, anger/shame/humiliation experienced by patients from professionals. This is a very important and timely book which has a unique contribution for those genuinely attempting to understand and care for those with mental health issues. Worth your time, worth your money.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book provides a heart-wrenching insight into one family’s struggle with bipolar disorder. It makes the reader understand the difficulties faced with the journey into mental illness. It shows how this disease affects every aspect of life. It brings to light the need for increased education and understanding of mental illness as well as the urgent need for improved mental health care. The author gives unique perspectives from the points of view of daughter, mother, sister, counselor and personal experience.
This book should be read by teachers, school guidance counselors, school psychologists and school nurses, police, 911 personnel, anyone who is connected to the mental health field, anyone who knows someone who is affected by mental illness and anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of mental illness.
Rating: 5 / 5
How do you begin to describe a book that turns a subject completely upside down on its proverbial head? This book is incredibly groundbreaking, albeit shocking, and should start a revolution in the field of mental health if those with power and influence are paying attention. The medical school paradigm of “okay, we’ve defined the problem; let’s cure it and count it a success” doesn’t work. Anyone with a mental health diagnosis could tell that to those fresh-faced medical students, residents and practitioners, if given half a chance. I hope that this work will finally change the way those involved in the mental health field approach their cases. A better understanding of the etiology of mental illness should lessen the senseless stigma still associated with these disorders. Why is there still such a stigma in 2009? The fact that this stigma still exists, with our purported intelligence in an “advanced” society, should be the real thing that shocks us all. Not the fact that S.J. Hart finally has the courage to tell the true story.
Rating: 5 / 5
Mental Illness is a very difficult, if not still taboo, subject to write about in this country. SJ Hart ignores that completely and tells a very poignant, personal, educational, story of multi-generational bipolar disorder. Just as it’s impossible for someone who’s never had a severe asthma attack to fully understand that feeling of being unable to get the oxygen necessary for life, no one who hasn’t had an up close and personal experience with bipolar disorder (or any mental illness) can fully “get it”. At least not without the help of a book like this one. There is both multi-generational physical and mental illness in my family. Physical things like epilepsy, severe asthma and arthritis that are invisible but debillitating carry their own stigma. The stigma with mental illness is worse; I can say because I’ve experienced both.
I’ve said that all doctors, nurses, etc. should have to spend a week in ICU where no one knows them on a respirator, with feeding tube, IVs, etc. to help them comprehend what their sickest patients endure; from those who are to help them as much as from anyone else. For psychiatrists to be there should be added to that, a week in a psychiatric locked unit, given meds they know are the flavor of the week with the pharmaceutical companies and generally disrespected by their care givers. We all know nothing even remotely like that will ever happen. For that reason alone this book is a must read for anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of the problem-stigmatizing the sick who have no control over their genetics.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book will give the reader an inside look into the world of mood disorders in a voice that many have not be able to articulate or have been scared to voice themselves. This book should be on every clinician’s must read list. The journey this author shares with us allowed me to regain with my sense of humanity as a practicing social worker. The human element of treatment that tends to get lost in the world of pharmaceutical cure alls and quick fixes.
Rating: 5 / 5