Product Description
This very personal exploration of schizophrenia explores each stage, from the early signs and reactions from friends and family to seeking help and the challenges of recovery. McLean bravely shares his paranoid delusions and offers both a verbal and a visual experience by including digital artwork he created to help objectify and control his impulses and fears. As McLean relates his experiences step by step, issues of sexuality, identity, and drug abuse are discussed, along with the overarching issues relating to mental health and the medical profession. Messages from online posters who either have suffered from mental illness or have cared for the mentally ill are included throughout, adding more perspectives to the author's personal experiences. This powerful combination of words and pictures provides a unique and poignant insight into a hidden, internal world.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 9 reviews)

Couldn't put this one down! by Ida Santos-Vissiere (San Jose, CA USA)

5 Stars
October 01, 2008
This writer allowed me to enter his world! This is a very brave individual who gave me a full picture of what it is like to have schizophrenia. Very well written, fast read. A particularly great book if you have a family member with this diagnosis. It gave me more insight into what my family member has suffered.

VERY good book. by Amanda Emory (Watsonville, CA USA)

5 Stars
November 25, 2007
GET this book for yourself and anybody you know that might be influenced by schizophrenia. This biography clearly describes the struggle the author has with schizophrenia. Reading this completely helped me understand the confusion I had about schizophrenia and explained behavior and circumstances in a very heartfelt and real way. I've purchased copies for everybody I know that wants to learn more about schizophrenia.

Lovely story by S. N. Rivera Burgos (Puerto Rico)

5 Stars
May 28, 2007
I like to read personal accounts of mental illness. This book is an artwork. It is a pleasure to hold, read, and look at. It is well organized, very entertaining with many drawings made at different times of the author's illness. I felt he was very honest, humble and friendly. I like the fact that he is a young writer. I guess the book was written when he was just 30 years old, so many young readers can identify with his art and music. There are many reasons he recovered. Among them his supportive family, supportive friends, he took up humble jobs along his illness even though having a university degree, modern medicines, he was able to balance the pros and cons of his medicine's side effects and keep taking them, ... [...].

Quick, interesting read by A. Bennett (Western Washington)

4 Stars
January 05, 2007
I read this book to make a recommendation to the Psychology teacher at the high school where I am the librarian. The teacher created an assignment for her classes where groups of kids would read a book together on a psychological condition in a book group type setting. I read many books on all different types of conditions over a fairly short period of time and then selected twelve books or so for her students to read. This book made the cut. I thought it was a very accessible book on the topic of schizophrenia in terms of language and length for high school students. I have talked to several of the students who were assigned this book and all seemed to think that the book did a good job explaining one person's story with schizophrenia without boring them with a lot of psychological/medical terminology. I will recommend this book to students who come to my library wanting to learn about schizophrenia.

For all interested in learning about schizophrenia, how to seek treatment and how to cope with it by Simon Cleveland (USA)

4 Stars
July 15, 2006
I stumbled accidentally on this book. Running a search through the online database at a local library branch, the title popped up on the screen. I cross-referenced it with the opinions of other readers from Amazon.com and decided it'd be an interesting overview of this incredible disease - schizophrenia. I found out after checking the book out that it won the Australian Book of the Year for 2004, which intrigued me further. Having read it, I am also of the opinion that it deserves the award. The book is short and easy to read (in terms of narrative), but it reveals the complexities of the disease. The author narrates his experiences from the moments the symptoms appeared to the medication phase that restored order in his daily existence. The book is written in snippets of experiences and often the reader is hurled one story after another of the patient's psychosis, paranoia, search for codes or deciphering of codes and secret messages, the delusions of voices the author heard and his reactions to them. In addition to these experiences, he inserts numerous e-mails from other schizophrenia patients he'd received or read on mental illness-online boards, as well as messages from family members of mental patients and how they coped with them. Since he is a graphics designer by trade, he'd added plenty of visual representations of his internal torments. I recommend this book to all readers interested in learning about the symptoms of schizophrenia, how to seek treatment and how to learn to cope with the disease. -by Simon Cleveland

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