Reviewing the past eight years

Summertime and my thinkin’ is hazy…… It’s so hot here that I am not much good doing anything. I’ve got deadlines, though. I’ll be retiring from work at the end of November. I’d been using that date as the point where I plan to begin the task of finishing my long overdue memoir, but have been snatching time when I can at night to review the chapters once more.  I want to stop talking about it, forget about dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” and just get it out there as an e-book. A lot of the reason for the delay is that, well, frankly, I’m no writer, and I had a lot to learn about effective writing.

So much has changed in the world of mental health since I began my book eight years ago, most importantly, Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, which came out in 2010. As painful as it was to read, the research it presented vindicated my own experience with my son’s inadequate (but very costly) medical treatment.

An interview with well-known neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Nancy Andreasen appeared in Sept. 2009 in the New York Times, in which she reveals her research finding that people with schizophrenia are losing brain tissue at a more rapid rate than healthy people of comparable age (as much as 1 percent per year), and that more drugs given, the more brain tissue lost.

The power of the Internet continues to bring people together to discuss issues of common concern when it comes to mental health. The Mad in America site provides the most authentic and intelligent discussions (not always the briefest or the kindest) on mental health

The beginnings of recovery based networks, such as Mother Bear, Practice Recovery, and Family Outreach and Response that challenge the accepted notion that mental health problems are almost always biochemical in nature by showing family members what they can do encourage recovery in their relative.

The rise of the mommy memoir re a child’s mental health crisis. Here’s where my added value will come in. These mommy memoirs, most of the ones I have read, with the notable exception of The Danny Diaries, fully subscribe to the medical model of the “illness.” Mine won’t. I promise.