"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. There was a script for a family like the Galvins--hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they all tried to play their parts. But behind the closed doors of the house on Hidden Valley Road was a far different reality: psychological breakdown,...

"1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Threatened by Elizabeth's intellect, independence, and outspokenness, her husband of twenty-one years is plotting against her and makes a plan to put her back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum. The horrific conditions...

"A beautifully illustrated memoir and empathetic investigation into a family's history with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and one woman's quest to find healing among what remains"--

"New York Times bestselling author Ron Powers offers a searching, richly researched narrative of the social history of mental illness in America paired with the deeply personal story of his two sons' battles with schizophrenia. From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the infamous eugenics era to the follies of the anti-psychiatry movement to the current landscape in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted...

"A darkly funny and devastating memoir of growing up in '90s Manhattan with a mentally ill single parent"--

Gile's childhood had been spent in doctor's offices; she spent nearly every waking moment at her mother's side. As Nyna grew up, her mother became more and more distant. Carolyn Scott Reybold had been a model in 1947, a friend of Grace Kelly, and even a bridesmaid at her wedding. How had that confident, glamorous woman become the mother Giles knew growing up-- the mother who was now living in a shelter? In her journey to uncover her mother's past,...

A moving, compelling memoir about growing up and escaping the tragic legacy of mental illness, suicide, addiction, and depression in one of America's most famous families: the Hemingways. The Hemingways: one of America's most famous families. But also a family with a tragic legacy of mental illness, suicide, addiction, and depression. Mariel Hemingway writes about how she grew up with this tragic reality, struggled to escape its legacy, and with...

This work is about the art of living mentally well. Told through the first-hand experience of mental health advocate, activist and speaker Kevin Hines (who has bipolar disorder), the story is an honest account of the struggle to live mentally well, and teach others how to do the same. It educates the public about mental illness and helps anyone reading find hope in any situation.

"Grace M. Cho grew up in a small, rural American town as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. When Grace was fifteen, her Korean mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue for the rest of her life. Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, TASTES LIKE WAR is a hybrid text about a daughter's search through intimate and global history to understand herself...

"One night in 2009, Tanya Frank finds her nineteen-year-old son, Zach--gentle and full of promise--in the grip of what the psychiatrists would label a psychotic break. Suddenly and inexplicably, Tanya is thrown into a parallel universe: Zach's world, where the phones are bugged, his friends have joined the Mafia, and helicopters are spying on his family. In the years following Zach's shifting psychiatric diagnoses, Tanya goes to war for her son, desperate...