Parental Mental Illness – Page 2 – Trish’s Mental Health Resources Blog

Hidden Victims Hidden Healers

Hidden Victims Hidden Healers: An Eight-Stage Healing Process For Families And Friends Of The Mentally Ill, 2nd Edition

By Julie Tallard Johnson, MSW, LICSW. (2007).

From Amazon.com: “The impetus of this book began with a personal search of mine for support groups for families of those with mental illness. I had a brother with Schizophrenia. I was also finishing up my graduate degree in Social Work (back in 1982). What these groups for families of the mentally ill “supported” concerned me. What I typically found were dysfunctional groups supporting negative and even hostile mindsets. Most of them encouraged a victim mentality to the surrounding culture and to the mental illness. When I considered using other group processes such as the 12 Steps, it didn’t convert well enough to help family members struggling with a loved one’s persistent and chronic mental illness. I also recognized that mental illness happens within the context of a family – not just the individual. Too often these groups focused on the mentally ill person at the expense of the family’s over-all own mental health and the health of other family members. I discovered in my research that how the family responds to the mental illness will either be part of the antidote or continued problem. In any give difficulty we are either part of the problem or part of the solution. I intended to offer a means for family members and friends to be part of a solution. Furthermore, families and their individual members are all personally affected by the disruption and difficulties brought on through living with mental illness. Those living with mental illness secondarily through a loved one also needed an aggressive healing path to help them live with (and sometimes beyond) the mental illness. So, I developed the Eight Stage Healing Process. My combined personal and professional experiences contributed to the chosen Stages. Furthermore, I researched what works and what doesn’t work in such support groups. When securing a publisher for the book I insisted that “coping” be left out of the title. Everyone is coping – the Eight Stages takes one beyond just coping with mental illness and the surrounding family dynamics and helps individuals and families heal. Twenty years later I still find, along with thousands of other family members that the Eight Stages is an authentic healing process that benefits all family members. The Eight Stages are; Stage One: Stage Two: Stage Three: Stage Four: Stage Five: Stage Six: Stage Seven: Stage Eight: The Eight Stages can be used individually or within a group context. If in a group, I have available the Facilitator’s Manual to use as a guide: Title here. Now the Eight Stages is the most used program for families in Australia and used throughout Canada and the United States.”

When Madness Comes Home

When Madness Comes Home: Help and Hope for Families of the Mentally Ill

by Victoria Secunda. (1998).

From Amazon.com: “The acclaimed author of “When You and Your Mother Can’t Be Friends” knows mental illness firsthand. Her painful, personal experience has served as the genesis for this book, a groundbreaking exploration of the effects which mental illness wreaks on the family.”

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned

By Alan Alda. (2006) From Amazon.com: “He’s one of America’s most recognizable and acclaimed actors–a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing, during his eleven years on M*A*S*H. Now Alan Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and affecting as his greatest performances.

“My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six,” begins Alda’s irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary success in his profession.

Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show-business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only just begun to grow.

It is the story of turning points in Alda’s life, events that would make him what he is–if only he could survive them.

From the moment as a boy when his dead dog is returned from the taxidermist’s shop with a hideous expression on his face, and he learns that death can’t be undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance of his father, both personally and professionally, Alda learns the hard way that change, uncertainty, and transformation are what life is made of, and true happiness is found in embracing them.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, filled with curiosity about nature, good humor, and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor, author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any Alda has ever played on the stage or screen.”

The Drama of the Gifted Child

The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Revised Edition

by Alice Miller, PhD. (2007)

From Amazon.com: “The bestselling book on childhood trauma and the enduring effects of repressed anger and pain.Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided millions of readers with an answer–and has helped them to apply it to their own lives. Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents’ expectations and win their “love.” Alice Miller writes, “When I used the word ‘gifted’ in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb…. Without this ‘gift’ offered us by nature, we would not have survived.” But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth.”

My Parent’s Keeper: Adult Children of the Emotionally Ill

My Parent’s Keeper: Adult Children of the Emotionally Ill

by Eva Brown, LCSW. (1989).

From Amazon.com: “Eva Marian Brown, LCSW, is a psychotherapist practicing in Oakland, CA. In her general practice she provides individuals, couples, … “

Growing Up with a Schizophrenic Mother

Growing Up With a Schizophrenic Mother

ISBN-13: 978-0786408207

By Margaret J. Brown, Psychotherapist & Doris Parker Roberts, LCSW. (2000).

From Amazon.com: “An estimated two to three million people in the United States today were raised by a schizophrenic parent. Brown and Roberts offer a unique book based on interviews with over forty adult children of mothers diagnosed as schizophrenic. Such topics as the isolation their family felt, their chaotic home environments, their present relationships with their mothers, and the lost potential of mother and child are covered. Their stories are fascinating and provide important information to both the mental health community and the lay public. The offspring have been described as having higher rates of “increased aggressivity” and “sibling conflict,” but often their circumstances strengthened these children and contributed to artistic and creative talents, resiliency, and high achievements. The authors provide an overview of schizophrenia, behaviors of the affected parent, and the marital relationship of the patient and her non-schizophrenic spouse. As adults, the respondents now share their grievances about the psychological community–what they needed and did not get. Brown and Roberts then present suggestions for treatment of affected children aimed at psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, and health care providers.”

ISBN-3: 978-0786408207