Schizophrenia in books

Original post by Community Leader SarahLiz:

I love to read, and since I live with mental illness, I particularly love reading about different mental illnesses that people live with. In particular, I enjoy reading auto-biographies about schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder (which was formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder). Some of the books on schizophrenia I have particularly enjoyed include:

-When the Music’s Over: My Journey Into Schizophrenia by Ross David Burke

-Schizophrenia: A Mother’s Story by Georgina Wakefield

and

-The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

Do you have books that you’ve enjoyed reading about schizophrenia or any other mental illnesses? If so, please share here! I’d love to know what ya’ll are reading and enjoying so that I can expand my list of books, too!

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~ Sarah
WEGO Helath Mental Health & Women’s Health Community Leader

Response by Community Producer Marie_WEGO_Health:

What a great thread Sarah!
I too enjoyed Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. The whole case study format is very interesting to me. Another book about schizophrenia that I really found interesting was A Beautiful Mind. Nasar’s biography of John Nash is actually pretty different from the movie and I think it does a better job of expressing this very complicated illness.

On a side note, if you enjoy Oliver Sacks, he recently wrote a piece for the New Yorker about music & the brain. It’s a case study of Clive Wearing, a British musician with amnesia. You can read it online here.

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Marie, WEGO Health Staff
Community Producer

Response by Community Leader SarahLiz:

Marie_WEGO_Health - 09 November 2007 10:36 PM

Another book about schizophrenia that I really found interesting was A Beautiful Mind. Nasar’s biography of John Nash is actually pretty different from the movie and I think it does a better job of expressing this very complicated illness.

Maybe I will give that book a shot. I couldn’t deal with the movie ... it was one of the very few times that I stopped a movie halfway through and haven’t ever tried to watch it again. I can’t explain why, it just didn’t work for me, and upset me so much I couldn’t deal. Maybe I’ll rad the book and then try the movie again though. Thanks for the recommendation, Marie!
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~ Sarah
WEGO Helath Mental Health & Women’s Health Community Leader

Response by Community Producer Marie_WEGO_Health:

Give it a shot, absolutely. Unless you’re really really interested in math though, I’d say it’s pretty safe to skip the first 100 pages or so if you feel like it’s really dragging.
The thing that bothered me about the movie once I read the book was that they really had to change the story in order to make it work as a movie. Showing someone who hears voices is a lot less compelling than showing someone who completely hallucinates people. They also played down the seriously political nature of Nash’s schizophrenia. Anyway, I would suggest giving the book a try. I didn’t finish it and go “wow, I love this book!” but it definitely gave me a lot to think about.
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Marie, WEGO Health Staff
Community Producer

Response by Community Leader SarahLiz:

Marie_WEGO_Health - 10 November 2007 09:47 AM

Give it a shot, absolutely. Unless you’re really really interested in math though, I’d say it’s pretty safe to skip the first 100 pages or so if you feel like it’s really dragging.
The thing that bothered me about the movie once I read the book was that they really had to change the story in order to make it work as a movie. Showing someone who hears voices is a lot less compelling than showing someone who completely hallucinates people. They also played down the seriously political nature of Nash’s schizophrenia. Anyway, I would suggest giving the book a try. I didn’t finish it and go “wow, I love this book!” but it definitely gave me a lot to think about.

I’m not a huge math fan, but I have this weird thing with books - I can’t skip parts. LOL (I also can’t start a book and then not finish it. If I start it, I can put it down for weeks and read another, but then I have to go back an finish the book. The only book I’ve not been able, out of pure boredom, to finish has been Anna Karenina.) I have added the book to my book mooch list so hopefully I’ll get it in the mail soon!

Your complaint about the book to movie switch sounds like something I would complain about, too. I’m really nervous about Love In the Time of Cholera to come out because of how much I’m sure it’ll change. We’ll see, I guess!
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~ Sarah
WEGO Helath Mental Health & Women’s Health Community Leader

Response by Community Moderator Barbara:

I am not sure if this literary character is schizophrenic, but I can’t help thinking of Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee. It’s about a man, crazed with delusions that this girl loves him, her family rescues her, but he searches her out and kills her, and lies beside her dead body thinking he found true love.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me -
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we -
Of many far wiser than we -
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
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Barbara
Moderator, WEGO Mental Health Communities

Response by Community Moderator PaulaWKY:

After reading the Poe poem that Barbara quoted I decided to buy a book on Poe. I had forgot how much I love his stuff and haven’t read it for some time. Thanks for the great suggestions. My book should be here tomorrow. If nothing else, this thread is keeping the book stores in business.
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Paula W.
Community Moderator
ADHD, Autism, Cancer, Parenting & Children’s Health, Diet, Weight Loss and Nutrition Communities

Response by Researcher Jolyn Wells-Moran, PhD, MSW:

Hi. I read, “I Know this Much is True,” by Wally Lamb a few years ago and thought it was very good. I also liked, “Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival: A Memoir” and “Transforming Madness,” both by Jay Neugeboren. Jay N. really did his homework and provides a picture of hope.

Jolyn
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Jolyn Wells-Moran, PhD, MSW, WEGO Health Expert

Response by Community Leader SarahLiz:

Jolyn Wells-Moran, PhD, MSW - 27 November 2007 10:34 PM

Hi. I read, “I Know this Much is True,” by Wally Lamb a few years ago and thought it was very good. I also liked, “Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival: A Memoir” and “Transforming Madness,” both by Jay Neugeboren. Jay N. really did his homework and provides a picture of hope.

Jolyn

Jolyn, thanks for the book suggestions! I added both Neugeboren’s (whose last name means “newly born” in German) book to my BookMooch list! I am looking forward to reading them both when they show up! I have loved Wally Lamb since I first read She’s Come Undone and so I trust your taste in books already!
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~ Sarah
WEGO Helath Mental Health & Women’s Health Community Leader

Response by Community Moderator Julia:

I’ve been meaning to post a book I heard about. I saw an interview with Alan Alda (M*A*S*H*’s Hawkeye Pierce) a few years ago, wherein he discussed dealing with his mother’s schizophrenia when he was a child growing up.

He wrote about it in his first memoir, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Other Things I’ve Learned. (He has a second book out, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.)

I’ve been interested in reading, it but I haven’t yet gotten my hands on a copy.
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Julia Temlyn
WEGO Health Community Moderator
Skin & Beauty, Women’s Health, Sleep Problems, and Pregnancy & Infertility