Product Description
This text examines the role of psychotherapy in the treatment of schizophrenia. It describes psychiatric workers' approaches and methods and includes research and pracitcal clinical material on dealing with schizophrenics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Thorough critical analysis.
This is an excellent addition to the library of any serious student of Vonnegut's works. Broer's insightful examinations of Vonnegut's writings add a new dimension to the reader's comprehension ... Read more

Product Description
A detailed booklet that describes Schizophrenia, symptoms, causes, and treatments, with information on getting help and coping. This booklet is also for family and friends that are looking for further understanding of schizophrenia.

You will learn in this Booklet:

What is schizophrenia?
What are the symptoms of schizophrenia?
When does it start and who gets it?
Are people with schizophrenia violent?
What about suicide?
What causes schizophrenia?
How is schizophrenia treated?
What is the role of the patient’s support system?
What is the outlook for the future?
How can a person participate in schizophrenia research?

You will also learn descriptions and solutions to these common terms:

about schizophrenia
bipolar schizophrenia
catatonic schizophrenia
childhood schizophrenia
children schizophrenia
disorganized schizophrenia
paranoid schizophrenia
paranoid schizophrenic
people with schizophrenia
schizophrenia
schizophrenia causes
schizophrenia disorder
schizophrenia people
schizophrenia research
schizophrenia symptoms
schizophrenia treatment
schizophrenia types
schizophrenic
symptoms of schizophrenia
the schizophrenia
what is schizophrenia
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A must have Schizophrenia Book for anyone...
A must have Schizophrenia Book for anyone looking for trusted information on mental health and schizophrenia.If you know someone, or think you know someone with this condition, you've got to get this, pluse it's cheap!

You Can't Get Any Better Information on Schizophrenia
This is your best choice if you are looking for the most information and for the best price. This information was taken straight from the U.S. Governmentand their publications.The U.S. government gives you the latest validated and accurate information available.If you are looking for Value and Accurate Information on Schizophrenia, this is it. ... Read more

Product Description
Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "Schizophrenia," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have Schizophrenia in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with Schizophrenia when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name Schizophrenia, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

Product Description
Written by a medical writer and family member of someone suffering from schizophrenia, this book outlines all of the issues involved with schizophrenia and its treatment including stigma, history, causes, physiological changes in the brain, and best treatments. It is an ideal reference and support for family members and others interested in this disease. It is also suitable as supplementary reading for students in health care fields (including medicine and nursing), psychology, social work and any occupation that needs solid information about schizophrenia. The book is recommended by the World Fellowship for Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders on its website. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Offering practical help, hope and a measure of relief
Schizophrenia continues to be responsible for much misery, suffering, crime, destitution and deprivation. Author Marvin Ross has performed a significant service by writing "Schizophrenia - Medicine's Mystery, Society's Shame." Ross dedicates his book "To all who struggle daily with the voices and other symptoms of schizophrenia, and to their families who suffer watching their loved ones valiantly struggling to cope." That says it, and Ross lives up to his dedication.

His book keeps everything succinct and blunt. This is an honest appraisal of an ugly subject, one that mainstream society would prefer to keep behind locked, sound-proofed doors.

This hard-edged blueprint takes a logical approach, giving a much-needed critique of historical myth as well as all too recent quasi-scientific blunderings that may have caused decades of delay in the search for rational treatment for this far-from-rational and thoroughly misunderstood disease. Too much received opinion on this subject has been wrong, and Ross correctly dedicates considerable space to expunging error.

Then come the essentials, lucid and well explained. Here is "Schizophrenia Defined," and a section reporting the conclusions of studies into five distinct categories of "Abnormalities." Sections dealing with "Theories of Causation/Treatment" and "Treatment Strategies" must surely be welcome to people who must cope with schizophrenia every day.

If I have a quibble with this book it is that I wanted to rearrange the Table of Contents to place some of the commentary on the lack of progress further down. However, Ross, a medical writer, is making a passionate appeal, and his delay in presenting sections on positive progress is understandable: real progress depends on exposing false doctrines from the past. Anyway, his Table of Contents is precise, so readers can easily find their way around, and his Index surely exceeds the most demanding expectations. One hopes that "Schizophrenia - Medicine's Mystery, Society's Shame" will reward readers with practical help, hope and a measure of relief.

Robert Fripp,
Author, Spirit in Health: Spiritual roots in modern healing... ... Read more

Product Description
In this award-winning book, Interpretation of Schizophrenia, Silvano Arieti presents the history of the medical research on schizophrenia, the summary of the ideas of the major scholars who devoted their careers to the illness and finally the conclusions drawn by the author himself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A forgotten Copernicus
A forgotten Copernicus

To understand Silvano Arieti's Interpretation of Schizophrenia we must first get straight the facts about psychiatry. Although this review is not the place to do it, those who are familiar with how some psychiatrists and neurologists dismiss bio-psychiatry know what I am talking about. Suffice it to say that there exists a whole journal, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry that debunks biological psychiatry: a profession that has hoodwinked the whole society.

Those who give credibility to everything that, under the banner of science, the status quo sells us (e.g., biological psychiatry), will consider it foolish that I take seriously an author who published a work about schizophrenia in 1955. Long before Colin Ross published Schizophrenia in this century, Arieti had already advanced a trauma model that would later resonate in Ross' psychiatric work.

Virtually forgotten, Arieti's treatise is an authentic mine of theoretical and clinical information to understand psychosis. Most striking about the massive body of literature from Arieti's colleagues that pointed at the family as responsible for the schizophrenias in their patients is that the theory was never refuted. It was conveniently forgotten, swept under the rug of political correctness in the mental health professions. It is very common to read in the textbooks of contemporary psychiatry and psychology that the theory of the schizophrenogenic parents was discarded because it was erroneous with the most absolute absence of bibliographic references to support such claim. I cannot forget an article written in the present century in which an investigator complains that, despite an extensive search, he did not find any coherent and clear explanation of why the schizophrenogenic theory has been abandoned.

As always, everything has to do with the fact that to question the parental deities is terrifying for most people, especially for those who are forbidden from using their own emotions: academics, including the mental health professionals.

Arieti distinguishes between a "paleologic" form of thinking (what Julian Jaynes called "bicameral mind") and the thinking that comes from "Aristotelian logic" that rules Western man. Since the first edition of his book Arieti points out that the paleologic thinking, which modern man only experiences in dreams, was omnipresent in prehistoric cultures. In order to avoid a runaway anxiety that drives the victim into panic, the patient diagnosed as schizophrenic abandons the Aristotelian norms of intuitive logic and lapses into the sort of thinking of our most primitive ancestors.

Like John Modrow, Arieti acknowledges the value of the work of Harry Sullivan about the panic the child experiences as a result of an all-out emotional assault from both parents. The paleologic regression can be adapted years after the abuse occurred, even when the child has become economically independent (cf. Modrow's How to Become a Schizophrenic). The withdrawal from reality, or psychotic breakdown, is the last and most desperate attempt of the unconscious to maintain the ego in a state of internal cohesion. A dramatic regressive metamorphosis arises when, one after another, the defenses that the victim had been using do not work anymore. To a greater or lesser degree all human beings function with a dose of neurosis, but in the psychotic outbreak, when neurotic defenses collapse, the subject falls into even more archaic forms of defense: mechanisms which had been overcome millennia ago, a regression to what Jaynes calls the bicameral mind.

Arieti's book contains chapters about his clinical experiences with patients. In the case of two brothers, Arieti describes how one of them suffered a pre-psychotic panic as a result of the abuse at home and observes that, once in a florid state of psychosis, "The paleologician confuses the physical world with the psychological one. Instead of finding a physical explanation for an event, he looks for a personal motivation or an intention as the cause of an event." Just as the primitive man, in a definitive breakdown of the Aristotelian superstructure, for the disturbed individual the world turns itself animist; each external event having a profound meaning. There are no coincidences for those who inhabit the world of magical thinking. Both the primitive animist and the modern schizophrenic live in distinct dimensions compared to the rational man. The conceptualization of external happenings as impersonal physical forces requires a much more advanced level of cognition than seeing them as personal agents. Arieti wrote:

"If the Greeks are afflicted by epidemics, it is because Phoebus wants to punish Agamemnon. Paranoiacs and paranoids interpret almost everything as manifesting a psychological intention or meaning. In many cases practically everything that occurs is interpreted as willed by the persecutors of the patient."

Arieti also writes about the time before the Homo sapiens acquired the faculty to choose an action through what we call today free will, and he adds:

"Philogenetically, anticipation of the distant future appeared when early man no longer limited his activity to cannibalism and hunting, which were related to immediate present necessities, but became interested in hoarding and, later, in agriculture in order to provide for future needs."

The reference to cannibalism makes me think that, though unlike Jaynes Arieti maintained that schizophrenia is due to the parents' behavior, unlike Lloyd deMause Arieti did not conceive that such cannibal practices, like the ones described in the Preface, could have injured the inner self of the surviving children in prehistoric times. Nevertheless, Arieti disagrees with the theoretical psychiatrists who see no similarities between schizophrenic and non-schizophrenic. He believes that such points of view "are fundamentally wrong", and, speaking of non-Western cultures and even of the times of Cro-Magnon man, he writes:

"Often the culture itself imposes paleologic conceptions and habits on the individual, even though the individual is capable of high forms of thinking. The more abundant is the paleologic thinking in a culture, the more difficult it is for the culture to get rid of it."

Arieti also rises the question of why civilization originated only ten thousand years ago. Like Jaynes, he believes that the incredibly long gestation of civilization had to do with the persistence of paleologic thought, and he adds that presently the paleologic defense mechanisms underlie the human psyche and can return in extreme conditions.

Arieti elaborated his theory twenty years before Jaynes or deMause started to write their books, and he was within an inch of discovering what deMause would discover: precisely that schizophrenogenic forms of childrearing through the Bone Age and the Stone Age had impeded the psychic integration of our ancestors. Getting ahead in time to Ross, Arieti wrote: "A characteristic unique in the human race -- prolonged childhood with consequent extended dependency on adults -- is the basis of the psychodynamics of schizophrenia."

Arieti defines schizophrenia as an extremely regressive reaction before an equally extreme state of anxiety, a dynamic that originates in infancy and that accelerates in adolescence, or later, due to abuses at home. "In every case of schizophrenia studies serious family disturbances were found". He adds that to produce schizophrenia a drama is needed which is sufficiently injuring to the inner self; a drama that, if we ignore it, we become deaf "to a profound message that the patient may try to convey". And writing about one of his patients, and getting again ahead in time to Ross, he tells us that this patient "protected the images of his parents but at the expense of having an unbearable self-image".

Interpretation of Schizophrenia contains the keys to understanding issues that at first sight seem incomprehensible, and even bizarre, for those of us who live in the world of Aristotelian logic: the probable meaning of the symbols of the oneiric world in which the psychotic individual lives; his apparently incoherent salad of words, the linguistic whys of his inner logic and the many regressive stages of the disorder. In Arieti's treatise there is an enormous richness of ideas and theoretical schemas that I cannot summarize here, as well as clinical analyses of his patients, to understand the gradations of madness. Even though, as I said, in the middle 1970s his book won the National Book Award, in a more valiant world his work would have been influential.

But society freaked out before the findings of Arieti because, to understand psychoses, it would have been necessary to point the index finger at the parents. And as an Alice Miller reader would say, the most potent taboo of our species prevents us from knowing the truth about our childhoods. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (8)

A Work of Art
This book is a masterpiece of typography. This is not mentioned enough on the amazon page here. As the book delves further into the schizophrenic/paranoid meditation on the concept of telephones, the text parallels the writing's insanity in the form of angled passages, strangely uncomfortable size variations, and some truly mind-bending blurred words. I was very intrigued by the notions of the telephone and its place in our world. It truly is an insane machine that we all take for granted. The book is very verbose, but anything less would undermine its authority and its lingual nature. I have to emphasize again how much value this book holds as a physical object. It is tall and narrow, black with subtle raised squares on the cover. The masterful use of text inside amplifies the sense of mystery and dread relating to its subject. It's like a tome, containing the untold secrets of our docile little telephones.

Avital is Cool--
those who want to protect the "integrity" of academia would not enjoy this book, but what can I say? Avital is a punk. She does not ask you to love her. Yet I find her writings generous; those who always feel to be orphans of society can understand what is going on in this book as well as her "Crack Wars" and recent "Stupidity." She is very much interested in transforming the world. I am contiually inspired by her writings. Aside from Nietzsche, she is the only one who has shown me that philosophy can be rock n roll.

jarred old coots
Ronell is the new scholarship. Praised be. Her style is innovative and she actually has something new to say about dead white guys. It's high time professors on respirators retired anyway. PS: She's the CHAIR of German Lit., Dr. Geezer.

Jarring is not the word
It is rare to encounter work so devoid of analysis coupled with boundless arrogance, and, literally, an attack on the reader's intelligence in advance of any argumentation. It's a bad, telling sign that the first wordsof the volume announce to the reader that the book "is going to resistyou": even Miss Ronell knows all too well the weaknesses of the textshe has produced! Why not responsibly address critical objections to thesubstance of the text, which her opening remarks indicate she's obviouslyhad, instead of claiming on an a priori basis intellectual brilliance nodissenting critic could possibly possess? This is a sad inaugural maneuver,one that fails to be masked by even the most elaborate typographical games."Jarring" is not the word for this book.

Jarring is not the word
It is rare to encounter work so devoid of analysis coupled with boundless arrogance, and, literally, an attack on the reader's intelligence in advance of any argumentation. It's a bad, telling sign that the first wordsof the volume announce to the reader that the book "is going to resistyou": even Miss Ronell knows all too well the weaknesses of the textshe has produced! Why not responsibly address critical objections to thesubstance of the text, which her opening remarks indicate she's obviouslyhad, instead of claiming on an a priori basis intellectual brilliance nodissenting critic could possibly possess? This is a sad inaugural maneuver,one that fails to be masked by even the most elaborate typographical games."Jarring" is not the word for this book. ... Read more

Product Description
This book will empower those who are suffering from the hell of schizophrenia.It is a Godsend as it provides the key that will give a person the chance to get better or recover from this disease.The author enlightens her readers as she takes them on an incredible journey as a little girl while growing up with relatives that suffered from mental illness.As an adult she finally escapes the clutches of an evil relative.Life takes another turn for her as she and her husband are confronted with a most difficult challenge when their young teenage son is stricken with schizophrenia.There is a very happy ending though, as she discovers that there is an alternative treatment that sets her son free him from a living hell on earth.With the joy of her son's recovery she shares with her readers the seriousness of how orthomolecular medicine played a significant role with his recovery. This is a must read for all family members, doctors, alternative medicine practitioners, school teachers and counselors. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

good
Overall its is a good book and well written. Its not quite a cure for schizophrenia, but gives a buffer and a relief from the the illness through prescription drugs and Dr. Abram Hoffer's orthomoleculer medicine.
... Read more

Product Description
Schizophrenic patients have bizarre experiences which reflect a disorder in the contents of consciousness. For example, patients hear voices talking about them or they are convinced that alien forces are controlling their actions. Their abnormal behaviour includes incoherence and lack of will. In this book an explanation of these baffling signs and symptoms is provided using the framework of cognitive neuropsychology. The cognitive abnormalities that underlie these signs and symptoms suggest impairment in a system which constructs and monitors representations of certain abstract (especially mental) events in consciousness. For example, schizophrenic patients can no longer construct representations of their intentions to act. Thus, if actions occur, these will be experienced as coming out of the blue and hence can seem alien. The patient who lacks awareness of his own intentions will stop acting spontaneously and hence will show a lack of will. The psychological processes that are abnormal in schizophrenia can be related to underlying brain systems using evidence from human and animal neuropsychology. Interactions between prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain, especially temporal cortex appear critical for constructing the contents of consciousness. It is these interactions that are likely to be impaired in schizophrenia. ... Read more

Product Description
Two million families in the US--40 million around the world--live an unending nightmare, sharing the torment of a family member suffering from schizophrenia. This compassionate survival manual explains the malady and its effects, treatments, and prospects, as well as widespread myths and actual experiences. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

One of the Best
I'm a social worker in the mental health field. I found this book 18 years ago and I still recommend it to family members to help them understand schizophrenia. It's easy to read and has good sound advice on how to help your loved one.

one of the best on the subject.
Having worked with patients that have schizophrenia and their families for the past 11 years, I have found Ms. Walsh's book to be one of the most understandable, direct and helpful books available. I have been recommending it for years and will continue to do so. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

More Taxes! Less Bread!
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus radically reconceieve the cartography of politics fused with a reconceptualization of desire, a desire that eschews and condemens Freud and Lacan's egregious transmogrification of what Deleuze and Guttari espouse its fundamentally positive nature. So the question that undergirds the text 'why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as thought it were their salvation?" posed by Reich and Spinoza because a diving board for Deleuze and Guattari as they excavate and render in new ways how the nature of desire has become directed towards socially sanctioned avenues, avenues that became conducive for the triumph of capitalism.

no easier
One would think postgraduate degrees would make these types of works readable, but unless there is plenty of time to spend on it, I think it advisable to purchase also some sort of Anti-Oedipus companion. Who knows, perhaps one has also to be smoking something. Despite the previous, one can get sufficient glimpses of some creative thinking and pondering about modern life in general and about western capitalist societies in particular, enough to make one pay close attention or go for a post-second reading. Foucault's preface misleads one into thinking the book is a piece of cake: great marketing strategy.

guide to an anti-fascist life
While studying philosophy at university, I was fortunate enough to have read this book. Some years hence, I am now middle management at a Fortune 500 company (it's very strange to me), and have just recently re-read it. The ideas about egalitarian models of leadership in this book are almost solely responsible for allowing me to remain a fundamentally good person. Without this book, I know there would have been instances where I would have done things unthinkingly and in error.

Amazing Stories
Although Deleuze and Guattari are usually invoked as part of a "postmodernist" litany, this work is refreshingly different from most postwar French theory. Derrida and Foucault, for all their revolutionary ambitions, are fairly traditional *maitre-penseurs*: the expectation is that you have a tip-top understanding of Hegel and other historical heavyweights, the better to appreciate their reversal. By contrast, *Anti-Oedipus* resembles nothing so much as the "philosophical" part of a work of hip science fiction: the line of argument is neither dialectically nor formally elaborated, but asserts only its plausibility in the context of the world being evoked.

I say this as a form of praise: in fact, unless you are (somewhat foolishly) expecting that an "intimate" knowledge of this book will advance your academic fortunes, your reading doesn't have to be especially careful to get something useful out of the book. As for its relation to thinkers who are properly venerated in the academy, it is (for all its contrariness) more accepting of Freud and Marx than most contemporary discourse is, so it actually isn't all that devastating a critique of them. But the enthusiasm they display for new hypotheses about these two is infectious: this is a book that makes you want to read *more* economics and psychology, not slam your head against the wall in protest against the impossibility of all understanding.

In the theory of schizophrenia advanced here, the "clinical" schizophrenic is carefully marked off from their treatment of schizophrenia as a process, so the anti-psychiatric implications of the book are only of the most general kind. Furthermore, a great deal of this process is elaborated with respect to imaginative literature by eccentric writers, not case studies of the clinically ill. But this means the results are not fundamentally incompatible with a contemporary understanding of psychotic illnesses: what opposes their resituation of schizoid desire as located at the most basic levels of work and social interaction are the normative intentions of those who study and control (or simply detest) the mentally ill, not scientific findings per se.

A thought-provoking book requiring no "theory" masochism to enjoy.

Original, brilliant... insightful, but distorted in perspective.
Why am I giving this book a five star rating? Because this work is an effort at a new theory that is systematic and terminologically consistent and must have been a torture for the writers to conjure up in their head.

It certainly is a torture to read this work. Not because I can't understand hard-core philosophy - I have read, understood and liked Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre and Derrida, considered amongst the most abstruse stylists - but because it is difficult to empathize with writers who characterize themselves and their readers as 'desiring machines' rather than as subjects with consciousness and will.

Is desire the only thing that defines human beings - what about will, thinking, compassion, judgment? And further why am I supposed to be a machine and in what sense? These are the questions that came to my mind. The authors never explain. The question of the subject is dismissed in one sentence.

It is also difficult to agree with writers who dismiss all seeking of power and all active resistance by implication as fascism and preach escape/flight as the most radical ideology of resistance and hope.

And it is difficult to find hope in the vain jargon of molecular vs. molar, in the lines of escape or flight, or in a schizoid approach to life (a schizophrenic has no control over himself - is a machine and hence is the authors' favorite).

The authors fail in their synthesis of Marx and Freud although they come close and fail to understand Nietzsche, one of their favorite philosophers. Marx, Freud and Nietzsche would turn violently in their graves, if they ever know what Deleuze/Guattari did to their philosophies. They speculations on incest, kinship etc., are just too weak, sketchy and merely assertoric to be taken seriously.

I do not endorse the philosophy of Deleuze/Guattari. To be sure they offer brilliant insights but their line of argument has as many holes as Swiss cheese.

Yet there are a few things that are brilliant in the work and it certainly remains an original and challenging work. Having, stated my disappointment with the work, now let me also state the better aspects of this work. This work has a very well argued theory of control mechanisms in primitive, barbarian and capitalist societies.

The authors rightly point out that capitalism governs well because it always generates new rules to survive (new axiomatic) and controls because all social codes are 'decoded' (de-codified) into flows (loose, lawlike systems of control) and de-territorialized. (Other writers have explained the same things in simpler jargon, but Deleuze-Guattari need to be given due credit for the brilliance of their analysis of capitalism, although their libidnalization of economics doesn't add anything valueable to the analysis of either libido or economics and seems forced).

The other hallmark of this work is that it offers one of the more interesting critiques of Freud's Oedipal complex, psychotherapy and its role in making humans conformist. They demolish the Daddy-Mommy-Me triangle and its implications in making us conformists quite effectively.

However, it may be borne in mind that there have been better criticisms of Freud's theories and Deleuze/Guattari are in some respects more Freudian than Freud with their libidinal interpretations of human beings as desiring machines and of economy as investment of desire (libidnal economy).

To sum up, this work is worth reading for its analysis of capitalism, and to some extent for its critique of psychoanalysis. However this is not a work that offers hope for the oppressed or an agenda for political action although followers of Deleuze/Guattari like Antonio Negri and Alain Badiou take their philosophy in a more positive direction. The best portion is the third section, followed by second. The least satisfactory portions and the last and the first, although they are essential to read in order to understand the relevant middle portion of the work.

And of course human beings are not desiring machines no matter what Deleuze/Guattari say. Beyond a metaphor, machinism is delusory. We are what we are. Happy to be human and animal rather than machines. Much as post-structuralist and post-modernists dismiss the question of the subject, the question remains - alive and active and kicking. ... Read more

Product Description
With advances in medical technology and with many large scale, longitudinal studies now underway, social and biological science have built a convincing case that the varieties of madness subsumed by the label schizophrenia are created, fueled, and sustained by genetic, biochemical and environmental factors. However, with the ever more detailed models of the neurobiological and social systems out of which schizophrenia is born, it is possible to overlook how suffering persons actually experience their symptoms and navigate their way through life.

This book is unique in focusing on the experiences of those who have schizophrenia, and who must make sense of and live with this condition. It explores how schizophrenia disrupts person's experiences of themselves as beings in the world and how that disruption poses enduring barriers to recovery - barriers not reducible to issues of social justice or biology. After presenting a model of how disturbances in self-experience are related to but not identical with symptoms and dysfunction, it looks at the implications for the development of therapies that might provide greater opportunities for recovery.

The book provides a highly readable and humane examination of this common condition. ... Read more

Product Description
Discover the importance of family in the treatment of schizophrenia!

Family Involvement in Treating Schizophrenia: Models, Essential Skills, and Process is an essential resource for developing clinical skills and programs designed to increase family involvement in the treatment of schizophrenia. The book is a "hands-on" learning tool to be used as a broad overview of many intervention models and/or for a more focused look at a particular model with details of its use, implementation, and effectiveness. Dr. James A. Marley presents case studies and vignettes of each intervention model in action, highlighting specific techniques and skills. He also examines self-help and family advocacy programs, and addresses professional issues that have a direct impact on the provision of family services.

Family Involvement in Treating Schizophrenia: Models, Essential Skills, and Process examines the practical application of family therapy when working with families coping with schizophrenia. The book addresses the importance of family involvement, the different types of intervention models that best serve the family, the founding principles behind the major intervention models, how to design and implement the right model, and how family issues impact service delivery. It includes recommendations for additional reading and listings of related Internet resources.

Among the therapies examined include:

psychodynamic
Bowenian
experiential
structural
strategic
systemic/Milan
cognitive-behavioral
narrative
solution-focused
multiple families
psychoeducational

Family Involvement in Treating Schizophrenia: Models, Essential Skills, and Process is a primary source of information for clinicians and students that's equally effective as a professional resource and as a textbook. The book is invaluable as an aid to developing sensitivity to the special needs of families coping with this debilitating disorder. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Important for therapists in a CMHC
This book is essential for clinicans working in community mental health centers. It goes through each of the major family therapy models and discusses how each theory could be applied in working with clients with schizophrenia. Great for beginning therapists. Does not include extensive information on the theories behind where schizophrenia comes from and how it progresses. ... Read more

Product Description
Schizophrenia is widely considered the most severe and disabling of the mental illnesses. Yet recent research has demonstrated that many people afflicted with the disorder are able to recover to a significant degree.

Living Outside Mental Illness demonstrates the importance of listening to what people diagnosed with schizophrenia themselves have to say about their struggle, and shows the dramatic effect this approach can have on clinical practice and social policy. It presents an in-depth investigation, based on a phenomenological perspective, of experiences of illness and recovery as illuminated by compelling first-person descriptions.

This volume forcefully makes the case for the utility of qualitative methods in improving our understanding of the reasons for the success or failure of mental health services. The research has important clinical and policy implications, and will be of key interest to those in psychology and the helping professions as well as to people in recovery and their families. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent read
I bought the book for a friend who has mental illness.It put her on the next level of mental health.Highly recommend this book.

living outside mental illness
Excellent book for anyone who is interested in researching psychiatric rehabilitation ... Read more

Product Description
The Healthy Mind Guides offer original research and treatment options for reversing several so-called mental disorders. Addressing the underlying imbalances--biological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual--of the disorders, each book offers a wide range of effective, practical therapies drawn from extensive interviews with physicians and other practitioners. Case studies throughout the books illustrate the applications of these therapies, and numerous resources are provided for readers who want to seek treatment.

"The Natural Medicine Guide to Addiction" delineates the causes of several common addictions--including cigarettes, alcohol, street and prescription drugs, work, sex, and food. More than a dozen proven natural therapies--including psychoneurobiology, family systems therapy, traditional Chinese medicine, and acupuncture--are presented by health professionals who use them everyday to successfully treat a wide range of addictions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Excellent intro to the holistic perspective of mental illness
Rossa Forbes is a contributor to Goddess Shift: Women Leading for a Change

I wrote an earlier review of this book which I still stand by. This book should be required reading for anyone who is dubious about the current medications only approach to treating schizophrenia. In my previous review I used the word "cured" in reference to my son. Since then he has had a relapse but is once again back on path. A cure simply means that someone with an illness has become healthy again or it can be the solution to a problem. The difference is that now I am taking a longer term view than I once held. I continue to refer to this book while picking off the therapies that it advises. My son has done Family Constellation Therapy (terrific!), cranial massage (useful), vitamin supplements (they work) and has undergone some interesting shamanic based therapies that I feel are key to resolving the underlying tensions. Stephanie Marohn's book has led me down the path of being a holistic believer. I see medical problems in a way that I didn't see them before. According to Gary Craig, founder of Emotional Freedom Technique, 85% of all illnesses are of a psychological origin. Once you go holistic, you equip yourself better to withstand the ups and downs that are associated with recovery and you dig deeper intoyourself to find solutions.

Book gives great hope
This book gives great hope to people with schizophrenia and those around them wanting to lessen the need for strong drugs with side effects. Suggested are many different models for healing with helpful addresses and phone numbers of clinicians. The most pragmatic book I have read yet.

These therapies work!
Finding this book was a godsend. Acting on many of the therapies described by Ms Marohn, I can now say that my son has been cured of schizophrenia. My "aha" moment came when I read that if schizophrenia is not healed at the level of vitamins, the problem may lie in the realm of beliefs and the unconscious. It is a travesty that people are routinely told by the medical/pharmaceutical lobby that schizophrenia is something inherently wrong with the brain. Ms Marohn has done an incredible service for anyone who doesn't want their loved one to live a life of wasted potential. This book changed my life.

Most insightful guide to schizophrenia
This is a wonderful book in the series of Marohn's healthy mind guides.I write this as a mental health professional who has experience with holistic modalities and also with populations of severely impaired mental patients, schizophrenics included.The author looks at a broad spectrum of natural approaches to healing schizophrenia (not managing/maintaining the condition like conventional psychiatry does).Other than the confirmation of diagnostic criteria and prevalency data about mental illness, this book contradicts much of what professionals and the public are usually taught about the topic.The normal approach to schizophrenia is shown to be to a great extent counterproductive, as natural methods are shown from clinical and empirical reports to often help those diagnosed with schizophrenia recover and live drug-free.Natural biochemical therapies, homeopathic treatments, family systems, shamanic healing, osteopathy, and mind-body approaches such as Dr. Hamer's psychosomatic new medicine are described.The book works its way from the outside in as it explores the levels of healing that may be addressed to heal illness.Interesting clinical accounts are presented and readers are given clear evidence that schizophrenics can recover and that there are a variety of resources available to help this occur, ultimately being less expensive than a lifetime of mind-numbing drugs and additional medical expenses of the side effects of those drugs.The mental health system could be a much more ethical and humane institution of society if people were reading books like this instead of blindly accepting pharmaceutical pseudoscience - and people who actually understand and respect the scientific method will recognize how dubious are the claims of the pharmaceutical establishment and their followers.I commend this book's author for not being afraid to point out that drug therapies are more likely to impede recovery than foster recovery, including stats from World Health Organization research.It's about time that some people in the mental health field are shaken out of denial!

Give to a friend or family struggling with schizophrenia
This title is an excellent review of supplemental therapies to tackle the mountain that is schizophrenia. Well written, organized, and referenced. ... Read more

Product Description
Over the last two decades, molecular genetics and brain imaging have guided efforts to find the causes of schizophrenia.It is becoming increasingly clear that many genes are involved in schizophrenia and that they interact with other factors in very complex ways, which have not yet been elucidated.Neuroimaging techniques have allowed scientists and physicians to examine brain structure, function, and chemistry in living patients with schizophrenia but results so far have been disappointing.No two patients seem to share exactly the same combination of clinical symptoms or physical findings.Yet all have the syndrome recognized as schizophrenia.The author of this accessible, well-written book argues that it is time to set aside the search for a single cause of schizophrenia and focus on the disease's final common pathway.He highlights clues from a wide range of research, including neurotransmitter, psychophysiological, and brain imaging studies.He then describes possibilities for the final common pathway at an understandable level in the context of what is already known about schizophrenia.While there are no preferred models of schizophrenia, a pattern is emerging which implicates those structures in the brain known to be important in integrating perception, cognition, and affect.A better understanding of these processes will be critical for developing more effective treatments.This book will help advance that effort.It will be of great value to psychiatrists, psychologists, neurologists, neuroimagers, and basic scientists working in the field of schizophrenia research, and to their students and trainees.It will also be of interest to clinicians and scientists concerned with other neuropsychiatric disorders, and to the families of those diagnosed with schizophrenia. ... Read more

Product Description
Medical Illness and Schizophrenia, Second Edition, is the only clinical guide exclusively on the treatment of medical comorbidities among patients with schizophrenia. Like its best-selling predecessor, this new, expanded edition compiles the latest research and clinical information regarding the crucial task of integrating medical and psychiatric care for the schizophrenic patient. The volume s fifteen chapters cover a wide range of common medical conditions, from obesity, heart disease, and diabetes to substance abuse and smoking. This edition also includes important new chapters on recent trends, behavioral treatments for weight loss, sexual dysfunction issues, and health outcomes of schizophrenia treatment in children, adolescents, and pregnant and breastfeeding patients.As the only clinical text of its kind, the expanded second edition of Medical Illness and Schizophrenia is an invaluable resource for hospital or community-based psychiatric physicians, family medicine and psychiatry residents, nurses, psychologists, and healthcare professionals. It is a comprehensive, practical manual that serves as a reference for the medical management of severely mentally ill patients across the age spectrum in both inpatient and outpatient settings. ... Read more

Product Description
Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA. Text provides a practical, three-phase manual on aspects of personal therapy for schizophrenics and others with related disorders. Includes recommendations for delivering the best care possible to patients and families. For practitioners in a range of settings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Great Book for the Practioner
This is a tremendous book as it's written by a Social Worker who uses an over all biopsychosocial model.You do not see many social workers writing about therapeutic interventions who even consider biological components.

Addditionally, Hogarty hastwo additonal components to the therapeutic strategy.He does a a concise review of entitlements with the proviso that its difficult to provide therapy when someone needs, food, medical care, and housing.The reader also gets a tool to understand the research in the appendices that reviews research terminolgy and methodology.

I have looked four years for a book that has a therapeutic technique for serious psychotic illness, accepts the biology of the illness, and recognizes the immediate needs of the client.

A book written by an obvious researcher whose heart comes through the pages.

New Hope for Schizophrenia!
Gerard Hogarty's new volume, Personal Therapy for Schizophrenia and Related Disorders, is a groundbreaking work which presents an empirically-validated psychotherapeutic approach for schizophrenia based on a contemporary biopsychosocial understanding.Hogarty, a Professor of Psychiatry at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, has a long and distinguished career as a clinician/researcher with schizophrenia.

For over 30 years, Hogarty and his colleagues have developed a series of psychososcial interventions (major role therapy, family psychoeducation, social skills training, personal therapy , and, most recently, cognitive enhancement therapy) and submitted each to rigorous empirical trials.After each trial, he carefully examines the data and formulates new approaches which incorporate his prior research findings and empirical data from other sources.

In the volume, Hogarty presents an approach to individual psychotherapy which he entitles "personal therapy" (PT).He describes his prior research efforts, most notably his two-year study of family psychoeducation which demonstrated a dramatic reduction in relapse in the first year of treatment, but a reduction in therapeutic efficacy as time passed. While observing that ameliorating family stressors reduced relapse, he also observed that family psychoeducation had no significant impact on the personal or social adjustment of schizophrenic patients.

Based on these prior experiences, PT uses a three-phase approach, the first focusing on clinical and environmental stabilization, the second on symptom management, and the third on developing new social and vocational initiatives.Throughout all phases, all patients were maintained on antipsychotic medications which were carefully titrated to minimize side effects.The progression of patients through these phases was determined by each patient's rate of progress, not by a prearranged protocol.Until the goals of one phase were accomplished, the goals of the next phase were not initiated. The research protocol followed patients for three years, an unprecedented duration for any intervention study in schizophrenia.

Before describing the three phases of PT, Hogarty devotes a chapter to outlining "essential prerequisites" for this intervention in considerable detail noting "that for decades are program has been guided by a silent mantra: innovative psychosocial treatment is for naught unless the fundamentals of good care are firmly in place (Hogarty's emphasis). His definition of "good care" includes psychological support (attentiveness, empathy, and encouragement), material support (financial support, stable housing, case management) and skillful medication management.Unique in the treatment literature, Hogarty addresses both the oft-ignored subject of obtaining government disability benefits and the intricacies of medication management.While the details of the former will be of little interest to most British readers, his attention to such seemingly mundane, yet essential, matters is impressive. (The clinic spent over $6000 annually for transportation subsidies when these costs were an impediment to clinic attendance.)

With these prerequisites in place, the first "basic" phase of treatment is initiated as a therapeutic team continues medications, "joins" with the patient and family, and educates patients about their illness using a stress-vulnerability model.In the second "intermediate" phase, patients examine their own illness is greater detail, exploring the precipitants of relapse, and finally coping strategies for symptom management are taught.Finally, in the third "advanced" phase, patients maintain stability and apply these coping strategies as they undertake new social and vocational initiatives.

Besides outlining the essential elements of PT, Hogarty describes the three-year controlled research protocol in considerable detail.In his discussion of the data, he carefully explores the considerable improvement of the control "supportive treatment" group, examining the therapeutic effects of "good care" and clinical management enjoyed by both experimental groups.However, while there was little significant difference between both treatment groups in both symptomatic presentation and functional adjustment at the one year mark (both groups improved significantly), the control group's progress leveled off while the PT group made impressive gains over the next two years.

However, examining patters of relapse, Hogarty observed that a subgroup of PT patients who lived alone actually had a far higher rate of relapse than did patients who received "supportive treatment" only.He commented that "we wondered whether these historical negative effects of psychotherapy might have had less to do with the intervention per se and more with cognitively overwhelming life experiences" (p. 64).Not surprisingly, patients with strong family support had much better outcomes.

This sort of multidimensional data analysis is perhaps unprecedented in the field of schizophrenia research, whether involving biological or psychosocial interventions.Hogarty sifts through his research data with a refreshing deftness and honesty; when the data does not support the efficacy of his intervention model, he straightforwardly acknowledges this and attempts to learn from negative as well as positive findings.In doing so, he briefly notes his most recent attempts to enhance the cognitive functioning of schizophrenic patients, an approach which is yielding impressive results.

In spite of this impressive empirical data, many psychotherapists may reject Hogarty's embrace of biological psychiatry and his neglect of psychoanalytic conceptualizations.He has little patience with intriguing metaphors or sophisticated interpretations.Yet, among the impressive array of data, Hogarty writes with a passionate concern for the well-being of persons with schizophrenia that is so often overwhelmed by statistical analysis.Researchers of schizophrenia would do well to learn from his sophisticated, yet readable, analyses.At the same time, psychotherapists treating schizophrenic patients will emerge with a better appreciation of the interplay of the biological, psychological and environmental dimensions of this complex disorder. ... Read more

Product Description
This book challenges the now widely held belief that most people diagnosed with schizophrenia will require long-term neuroleptic treatment, and that recovery is relatively unusual without it.It shows how a holistic approach which treats body, mind and sould can significantly improve the likelihood of healing and recovery, even for those with a long history of schizophrenia ... Read more