Resource Documents

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~ E. Fuller Torrey, MD 

Since its first publication in 1983, Surviving Schizophrenia has become the standard reference book on the disease and has helped thousands of patients, their families, and mental health professionals.

In clear language, this much-praised and important book describes the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment, and course of schizophrenia and explores living with it from both the patient's and family's point of view. 

~ DJ Jaffe & E Fuller Torrey, MD

DJ Jaffe's well-researched and highly critical examination of our mental health system by the industry's most relentless critic presents a new and controversial explanation as to why--in spite of spending $147 billion annually--140,000 seriously mentally ill are homeless, 390,000 are incarcerated, and even educated, tenacious, and caring people can't get treatment for their mentally ill loved ones. 

~ Elyn Saks

 Focusing on overinterventionist approaches, Refusing Care explores when, if ever, the mentally ill should be treated against their will. Basing her analysis on case and empirical studies, Elyn R. Saks explores dilemmas raised by forced treatment in three contexts—civil commitment (forced hospitalization for noncriminals), medication, and seclusion and restraints.  

~ Elyn Saks

A much-praised memoir of living and surviving mental illness as well as "a stereotype-shattering look at a tenacious woman whose brain is her best friend and her worst enemy" (Time). 

~ Phillip Yanos

Written-Off tells the story of how mental health stigma comes to have a profound impact on the lives of people diagnosed with mental illnesses. It reviews theory, research, and history - illustrated with a multitude of personal stories.

~ Elyn Saks

 Elyn Saks, Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the USC Gould School of Law, discusses the legal implications surrounding mental health and candidly shares her personal experiences with schizophrenia. 

~     Esme Weijun Wang

 Powerful, affecting essays on mental illness, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and a Whiting Award 

~ Kenneth Paul Rosenberg

 A psychiatrist and award-winning documentarian sheds light on the mental-health-care crisis in the United States. 

 ~ Alisa Roth

An urgent exposé of the mental health crisis in our courts, jails, and prisons from a veteran public radio journalist. 

 ~ Lori Schiller

Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, author's memoir is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage. 

 A dual memoir of identical twins, one of whom faces a life sentence of schizophrenia, and the other who becomes a psychiatrist, after entering the spotlight that had for so long been focused on her sister. Told in the alternating voices of the sisters, Divided Minds is a heartbreaking account of the far reaches of madness, as well as the depths of ambivalence and love between twins. 

~  Robert Koller

The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.