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The ghost garden : inside the lives of schizophrenia's feared and forgotten / by Hannaford, Susan Doherty,1957-author.;
"A rare work of narrative non-fiction that beautifully illuminates a world most of us try not to see: the daily lives of the severely mentally ill, who are medicated, marginalized, locked away and shunned. Susan Doherty's groundbreaking book brings us a population of lost souls, ill-served by society, feared, shunted from locked wards to rooming houses to the streets to jail and back again. For the past ten years, some of the people who cycle in and out of the severely ill wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal, have found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the ward, and then follows her friends out into the world as they struggle to get through their days. With their full cooperation, she brings us their stories, which challenge the ways we think about people with mental illness on every page. The spine of the book is the life of Caroline Evans (not her real name), a woman in her early sixties whom Susan has known since she was a bright and sunny school girl. Caroline has given Susan complete access to her medical files and her court records; through her, we experience what living with schizophrenia over time is really like. She has been through it all, including the way the justice system treats the severely mentally ill: at one point, she believed that she could save her roommate from the devil by pouring boiling water into her ear ... Susan interleaves Caroline's story with vignettes about her other friends, human stories that reveal their hopes, their circumstances, their personalities, their humanity. She's found that if she can hang in through the first ten to fifteen minutes of every coffee date with someone in the grip of psychosis, then true communication results. Their "madness" is not otherworldly: instead it tells us something about how they're surviving their lives and what they've been through. The Ghost Garden is not only touching, but carries a cargo of compassion and empathy."-- Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Schizophrenia.; Schizophrenics.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Like crazy : life with my mother and her invisible friends / by Mathews, Dan,author.;
"Dan Mathews knew that his eccentric mother, Perry Lawrence, was outspoken, foul-mouthed, and, at seventy-nine years old, unable to maintain her fiercely independent lifestyle--so he flew her across the country (with a gay man as her escort) to live with him in a dilapidated Victorian townhouse in Portsmouth, Virginia. What he didn't know was that she was schizophrenic. Over the next five years, Dan and Perry built a rollicking life together fueled by costume parties, experiments in drug use, and an unshakeable sense of humor as they faced down illness, natural disasters, and Perry's steady decline. With the help of an ever-expanding circle of friends--boyfriends new and old, strippers, DJs, gun nuts, Evangelical Christians, and everyone in between--they flipped the parent-child relationship on its head, with the globe-trotting animal rights activist finally learning to slow down and care for the woman who raised him. But it wasn't until after a kicking-and-screaming trip to the emergency room that Dan discovered that his mother's lifelong tendency to go it alone wasn't just a manifestation of her free spirit but was actually the inescapable element of a serious and undiagnosed disorder. Witty, emotionally powerful, and deeply moving, Like Crazy is a warm and engrossing memoir about mental illness, reinvention, and the remarkable power of community. Lovingly told, Mathews's memoir is also a profound meditation on the joys and pitfalls of caring for an aging family member and of the remarkable growth that takes place as a child steps into the role of the parent"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Mathews, Dan.; Mathews, Perry Lawrence; Mothers and sons; Schizophrenics; Schizophrenics;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Hidden Valley Road : inside the mind of an American family / by Kolker, Robert,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations. With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Schizophrenics; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenics; Mentally ill;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Ghosts of Harvard : a novel / by Serritella, Francesca Scottoline,author.;
"Cadence "Cady" Archer arrives on Harvard's campus searching for answers about her brother, a schizophrenic genius who leapt from his dorm room window the year before. Eric's brilliance overshadowed Cady growing up, but she worshipped and adored him--even as he became more unstable, retreating deeper into his secretive work on multidimensional spacetime and isolating himself from everyone around him. Losing Eric has left a black hole in Cady's life, and while her choice to walk the same path threatens to break her family apart, she is driven to know why Eric killed himself. As Cady struggles under the enormous pressure that comes with being at Harvard, she begins to investigate her brother's life on campus. What was it that caused Eric to spiral into an irretrievable madness--the paranoia, the delusions, the illusory enemies--after he had been doing so well? Soon, her prying turns up clues that grow increasingly sinister. And then, as her suspicions mount, Cady begins to hear voices herself: three ghosts that walked the hallowed halls of Harvard, each from a different era of American history. That's when the panic sets in. Does she share Eric's illness, or are these voices real? And if she listens to these ghosts, will they lead to her brother--and the truth--or will they lead her down a path of her own destruction?"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Psychological fiction.; Ghost stories.; Harvard University; Brothers and sisters; Paranoid schizophrenics; College students;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Stella Maris [text (large print)] / by McCarthy, Cormac,1933-author.;
"The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road returns with the second of a two-volume masterpiece: Stella Maris is an intimate portrait of grief and longing, as a young woman in a psychiatric facility seeks to understand her own existence"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Large type books.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Grief; Mental illness; Mentally ill women; Psychiatric hospitals; Schizophrenics; Women doctoral students; Young women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Glass [videorecording] / by Clark, Spencer Treat,1987-actor.; Jackson, Samuel L.,actor.; Shyamalan, M. Night,film director,screenwriter,film producer.; Kirby, Luke,1978-actor.; McAvoy, James,1979-actor.; Paulson, Sarah,1974-actor.; Taylor-Joy, Anya,1996-actor.; Willis, Bruce,1955-actor.; Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (Firm),film distributor.;
Sarah Paulson, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy, James Mcavoy, Luke Kirby, Spencer Treat Clark.M. Night Shyamalan's cleverly conjoined follow-up to "Unbreakable" and "Split" finds invulnerable vigilante David Dunn (Bruce Willis) in pursuit of superhuman schizophrenic Kevin Crumb (James McAvoy). However, their conflict culminates in their arrest and commitment to an asylum, where a smug psychiatrist (Sarah Paulson) tries to convince both they're delusional ... and puts Crumb in perilous proximity to Dunn's brittle nemesis, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson).Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.MPAA rating: PG-13.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1, 2.0 DVS.
Subjects: Thrillers (Motion pictures); Feature films.; Superhero films.; Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.; Multiple personality; Dangerously mentally ill; Supervillains; Superheroes; Psychotherapist and patient; Good and evil;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Slaughterhouse-five, or, The children's crusade : a duty-dance with death / by Vonnegut, Kurt,1922-2007;
Subjects: Classics; Literary; World War, 1939-1945; Satire;
© c1969., Dell Publishing,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The woo woo : how I survived ice hockey, drug raids, demons, and my crazy Chinese family / by Wong, Lindsay,1987-author.;
"In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family who blame their woes on ghosts and demons when they should really be on anti-psychotic meds. Lindsay Wong grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic grandmother and a mother who was deeply afraid of the "woo-woo" -- Chinese ghosts who come to visit in times of personal turmoil. From a young age, she witnessed the woo-woo's sinister effects; when she was six, Lindsay and her mother avoided the dead people haunting their house by hiding out in a mall food court, and on a camping trip, in an effort to rid her daughter of demons, her mother tried to light Lindsay's foot on fire. The eccentricities take a dark turn, however, and when Lindsay starts to experience symptoms of the woo-woo herself, she wonders whether she will suffer the same fate as her family. At once a witty and touching memoir about the Asian immigrant experience and a harrowing and honest depiction of the vagaries of mental illness, The Woo-Woo is a gut-wrenching and beguiling manual for surviving family, and oneself."--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Wong, Lindsay, 1987-; Wong, Lindsay, 1987-; Wong, Lindsay, 1987-; Wong, Lindsay, 1987-; Chinese Canadians; Psychoses; Psychoses;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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The third rainbow girl : the long life of a double murder in Appalachia / by Eisenberg, Emma Copley,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-318)."In the early evening of June 25, 1980 in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived; they traveled with a third woman however, who lived. For thirteen years, no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders," though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community, depicted as poor, dangerous, and backward. In 1993, a local farmer was convicted, only to be released when a known serial killer and diagnosed schizophrenic named Joseph Paul Franklin claimed responsibility. With the passage of time, as the truth seemed to slip away, the investigation itself caused its own traumas-- turning neighbor against neighbor and confirming a fear of the violence outsiders have done to this region for centuries. Emma Copley Eisenberg spent years living in Pocahontas and re-investigating these brutal acts. Using the past and the present, she shows how this mysterious act of violence has loomed over all those affected for generations, shaping their fears, fates, and the stories they tell about themselves. In The Third Rainbow Girl, Eisenberg follows the threads of this crime through the complex history of Appalachia, forming a searing and wide-ranging portrait of America-- its divisions of gender and class, and of its violence."-- Dust jacket flap.
Subjects: True crime stories.; Murder; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A kind of mirraculas paradise : a true story about schizophrenia / by Allen, Sandra(Nonfiction writer),author.;
"Dazzlingly, daringly written, marrying the thoughtful originality of Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts with the revelatory power of Neurotribes and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, this propulsive, stunning book illuminates the experience of living with schizophrenia like never before. Sandra Allen did not know her uncle Bob very well. As a child, she had been told he was "crazy," that he had spent time in mental hospitals while growing up in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s. But Bob had lived a hermetic life in a remote part of California for longer than she had been alive, and what little she knew of him came from rare family reunions or odd, infrequent phone calls. Then in 2009 Bob mailed her his autobiography. Typewritten in all caps, a stream of error-riddled sentences over sixty, single-spaced pages, the often incomprehensible manuscript proclaimed to be a "true story" about being "labeled a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic," and arrived with a plea to help him get his story out to the world. In A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise, Allen translates her uncle's autobiography, artfully creating a gripping coming-of-age story while sticking faithfully to the facts as he shared them. Lacing Bob's narrative with chapters providing greater contextualization, Allen also shares background information about her family, the culturally explosive time and place of her uncle's formative years, and the vitally important questions surrounding schizophrenia and mental healthcare in America more broadly. The result is a heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious portrait of a young man striving for stability in his life as well as his mind, and an utterly unique lens into an experience that, to most people, remains unimaginable"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Allen, Sandra (Nonfiction writer); Schizophrenia;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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